We're not Immortal After All

Dixie Carter died.

I didn't think things like that happened to people like us, Southern Ladies. I've been so naive. Now this. It changes everything. If something so unmentionable can happen to Dixie Carter then it can probably happen to me, too.

Am I ready? Have I hostessed enough garden parties, attended enough UDC meetings, baked enough casseroles, been to enough football games, grown enough tomatoes, eaten enough cucumber finger sandwiches, taught enough Bible School, mulched enough magnolias to enter through the pearly gates and recline in my heavenly home along the banks of the Suwannee River?

Miss Dixie, I hope that sweet chariot swings low for you and carries you on home, where the angels sit you down to a fine meal of fried chicken, okra, butterbeans, summer squash, sweet iced tea, and Mama's homemade mashed potatoes. And I hope all your kinfolk, who went on before you, are gathered around that table, too, talking and laughing and telling stories and generally welcoming you. What a wonderful celebration it must be when a Southern Lady gets to the other side.

Rest in peace, Miss Dixie. All us girls down here, now that we know the Lord will send for us as someday, as well, have got a whole lot of silver to polish so we can be ready.

You hear that, Lord! A whole, heap of a lot of silver to polish, so please don't show up for the party before I'm expecting you.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Match Day

Oh to be young and carefree and bolder than is warranted by good common sense.
My brother-in-law and his wife, expecting their first baby, are celebrating Match Day today. After four years of medical school, he now has a residency to conquer. And med school seniors have a very special process for finding out where they will spend the next 2 years of their lives - Match Day. In a formal ceremony, after professors and other speakers have ceased speaking all their obligatory words of inspiration, they begin handing out white envelopes filled to the seal with destiny.

Each student, when his or her name is called, walks across the stage to retrieve the envelope designated as his or hers. Then the students makes what must seem like an even longer walk back across the stage, clutching mystery in a sweaty palm.

The Envelope Please.
The crisp, clean, white envelope contains the name of the city and hospital of each M.D. candidate's residency. With a rip and a tear, which they all swear is no reflection of their surgical precision, the mystery place is revealed, and life turns on a dime and shoots off in a different direction. And they find themselves free to lay down the burdens of one place to seek and find the thrills of another.

I want an envelope.
Frankly, I'm jealous. I want an envelope. I want that freedom to just go where someone told me to go, without ever having to make the decision myself. I want to go on an adventure that makes left turns and zig-zags to places I wouldn't have chosen for myself. I want to experience that emotion of change.

But, I'm a southern lady, and I well know the difference between foolish and fearless. It is foolish to believe that life would be any different somewhere else than it is right here. When the sport of it wore off, I'd have the same problems in a different place.

The quality of my life depends more on what I do with it than where I live it. (Although, admittedly, if I drew an envelope that took me from my southern home, I would probably try to rig my next draw to bring me home.)

Making my own Match Day.
That doesn't make my desire for venturesome behavior any less intense. So I stuffed some envelopes of my own. I put in slips of paper that say things like, "Go get ice cream," "Take the kids to a movie," "Have your nails done," "Take your husband on a date," "Day trip to the beach," etc. When I need a little fearless fun, I plan to pull an envelope and do whatever it says.

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: In your Book of Lists, brainstorm a list of things you would like to do but rarely make time for or let yourself indulge in. Then write the ones you really like on slips of paper and seal them in envelopes. Keep your stack of stuffed envelopes in a safe place, and pull one whenever you feel like you're making too many right turns and you need a curve in your road. Commit yourself to going wherever the envelope sends you.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 27

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go on.
--Andrew Jackson


I sure hope he credited his mama for those words of wisdom. I know that's where he heard them first.

Life is the sum of small decisions. Everyday, I face choices, some of which I would rather avoid. But even when I skirt around them, or delay them by agonizing over the details and possible consequences, or ignore them, I'm making a decision.

I love my mother-in-law. She is organized, kind, deliberate in her actions, conscientious about making her house a home even though her children are grown and married. She has difficulty making decisions, however. For example, she will shop every store in town looking for the perfect curtain rod. Not because she can't find anything she likes, but because she fears leaving unexplored options on the table. Meanwhile, the bare windows provide no privacy.

We are the decisions we make and the ones we let other people make for us and the ones we refuse to make and the ones we can't make. Where we end up when all is said and done greatly depends on all the little choices. Finding the balance between deliberating our options and taking action says a lot about who we are and what we value. Certainly, curtain rods won't throw off the course of my mother-in-law's life, but is thinking a little longer worth its weight in time she could spend doing something else more rewarding?

Southern ladies don't necessarily leap into things, letting their skirts fly over their heads for the whole world see their foundation garments. But they certainly don't sit around wringing their hands about the little stuff, either. Because, it's up to us to model lives well-lived, time well-spent, for those who are watching our every step.

So, what are you going to do? Are you going to sit around and think about living fearlessly, or are you going to get up and go do it?

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: It's about making a choice of course! Have you ever watched an old movie in which a character approaches the bar and the bartender asks, "What'll it be?" The hero or heroin responds, "The usual, Wallace," and the bartender says, "Sure thing. A strained Tom Collins, no ice, two olives, and a dash of V-8 coming right up."

Okay, I ad libbed quite a bit, but you get the picture. Our character in question is known by his/her own personal drink. I think you know where I'm headed with this. Today, you've got to choose your drink; the one that says who you are, the one that friends and family know you by, the usual. Is it chocolate milk on ice? Is it Diet Coke with a twist of lemon and a dash of leftover coffee from the morning brew? Is it an Upside Down Southern Belle with a parasol?

You decide.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 14

Talk the talk. Walk the walk. Look the look.

My mama always told me, especially when I was a teenager, that even if I didn't feel happy or have anything nice to say I better do my level best to look happy. Appearances are everything in a southern girl's world. "Put on a pretty smile and pretend," she would say. And over the years I found that simply smiling often brought about a change in my attitude.

One thing we southern ladies do very well is fake it. Lord knows we can ooh and ahh over Emily Ann's 4 carat diamond engagement ring with sapphire baguettes, only to gather on the balcony with our confidants to discuss how gaudy and overdone it is. But Emily Ann will never know the difference, because it is in our genes to pull off such things. In fact, faking it well is why folks from the south are considered to be the politest in the union. When we remark to a traveler from above the Mason-Dixon how lovely a white Christmas must be, he doesn't know that what we're really thinking is, Heaven help us, that accent will be the death of me if he doesn't move on here presently. Then we offer up another glass of sweetened iced tea.

Our generosities of word and deed never cease.

Two keys to living fearlessly are putting on the proper face and a little make-believe. Some of you may not have guessed it yet, but I am interminably shy. Not just a little shy, but SHY. For me, standing in a bookstore greeting total strangers and asking them to purchase my book (If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny) is a monumental task wrought with worry and angst. But since I'm living fearlessly I make myself do it anyway.

I dress the part, wearing a smart skirt, crisp blouse, and precious shoes. That way if someone can't think of anything nice to say about my book, she can at least comment on how much she likes my ensemble. I put on a smile. According to my friend Heather, if a girl smiles and says pleasantries, the worst anyone can say or think about her is that "she's sweet as she can be." Finally, I maintain good posture - shoulders back, chin up - projecting the confidence that fearless women possess.

By the middle of every book signing I believe it myself, I'm fearless, chatting up random passersby and insisting they stop and take a gander at my heart's work. Looking the look transfers to walking the walk and talking the talk.

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: Plan a day of pampering with a purpose. Looking fearless tranlates as looking our best. So, a manicure and a pedicure are a must. Freshening and updating your hairstyle, both cut and color, cannot be skipped. A massage will loosen all the worries from your muscles and a facial will bring out that girlish glow.

Then you're off to purchase one perfect outfit. You do not have to go on a $5000 What Not to Wear shopping spree in New York City. Puh-leeease. Target, TJ Maxx, Kohl's, Ross Dress for Less, and Marshall's all have what you need. You'll know you've found the one when you put it on and your back straightens and you've got an overwhelming urge to run right down to the shoe department.

Double the fun and go with a girlfriend or two. Then go out and live fearlessly together. By all means, fake it, if you have to, until it comes naturally.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 1

I present to my readers, the Day 1 of the Southern Girl's Primer on Living Fearlessly. Make sure you do the assignments found at the end of each day. Before long, you'll be living a new, more vibrant life, without ever giving up your neutral decorating pallet:

There are opportunity costs built into everything we choose. We often overlook the fine print at the bottom of the contract and sign a waiver without reading it. If we didn't we would never make a decision or move forward. Making an informed decision is preceded by long periods of failure to act.

I've decided enough is enough. I will live fearlessly. I'm throwing caution tape to the wind, unfurling it like big yellow celebration streamers. Let it wrap someone else in complacency.

Oh heavens! What am I saying? A good southern woman can't do that! We have rules, we have standards, for goodness's sake, we have etiquette to follow. I would simply die if I thought my neighbors disapproved of my behavior.

But there must be a way. Certainly living fearlessly doesn't mean wearing a black dress to a wedding or a hot pink cocktail number to a funeral. I don't have to paint my monogram on the garage door or hang out in a juke joint to live fearlessly. Southern girls can honor their heritage, keep their proper prim, and still throw a buttered biscuit now and again. We can know who our people are, compose a polite invitation or thank you note, deliver casseroles to the sick and deceased, and still sweeten our tea with pure sugar.

Take me, for example. For six years a bare bulb hung from the ceiling of my 1915 home. I decided when we moved in that I would buy a crystal chandelier to match the huge ones in the living room and dining room. I feared marring the traditional architecture of my home by hanging something more modern. After six years of concern, worry, saving, angst, searching, I found myself in a lighting store making an impulse buy.

I purchased a walnut colored pendant fixture. After my husband hung it, I looked up and realized what a fool I had been all these years, tangled up in caution tape. It wasn't a crystal chandelier that the room needed, it was a touch of me.

YOUR FIRST ASSIGNMENT: What your life needs is a touch of YOU in it. Today go buy a piece of canvas, an old board, a slip of tin roof, anything with a paintable flat surface (but, do be tasteful, no saw blades or birdhouses). Using whatever paints and brushes you have, create your own folk art, abstract art, self-portrait, etc. There are three rules to this:
1) Do not paint what other people expect you to paint.
2) Your finished work must be displayed in a common area of your house, where guests to your home will see it.
3) You may never, under any circumstances, including being pressured by a realtor or interior decorator, make excuses for it, diminish it verbally, or move it to a less conspicuous area; that would be like badmouthing YOURSELF and hiding away in a closet and we all know a proper lady would never poor mouth the family name.

Still Living Fearlessly . . . Sort Of

Just a question. I've been thinking a lot about my March-made New Year's Resolution to take life by the roots of its hair and pull until it cries, "Uncle." And while contemplating this questionably unladylike behavior, I've encountered a bit of a quandary, even a possible quagmire.

Can a southern lady truly live fearlessly without risking her virtue or her neutral color palette?

My dilemma is a crimp in the curling iron, for sure. What's a girl to do?