Living on the Diagonal

Life on our mountainside: observations, experiences, essays

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The Crone’s Autobiography in Twenty Minutes

  • Born with the atom bomb 
  • Struggling, loving parents
  • Polio scare
  • “Doodlebug, Doodlebug, come out of your hole; your house is on fire and your children will burn”
  • Mustard plasters
  • Daddy telling “The Crooked Mouth Family” story (over and over to much delight)
  • Separated from my best friend
  • Found him again two years later and showered him with 100 unwanted kisses on the school playground
  • Hopscotch; Jacks; Lavender Blue, Billy Billy, Lavender Green
  • Field trips—Merita Bakery, Coble Dairy, Timrod Park
  • Spelling bees, Old Maid, racist school plays (Epaminondas; Little Black Sambo)
  • Recess trips to the bathroom with friends to see who’d be the first to get her period
  • First bra; first kiss
  • Les Miserables; First “C” (Damned math!)
  • School chorus, church choir, handbell choir
  • 4-H—projects, camps, awards
  • Student Senate, May Court, Social Board, Japanese tea garden
  • First love, lost love, real love
  • All grown up, all alone together
  • Poor and in love, our first home of our own
  • Babies, diapers, formula, laughing, crying, exhaustion, love
  • Politics, women’s movement, civil rights, peace movement
  • Speaking my mind, shaking in my boots
  • Life in a tent; baths in a mountain creek, building our home with our own four hands: dreams of self-sufficiency
  • Gymnastics, cross country, careers
  • Camping, canoeing, photography, basketry, writing, publishing
  • Grandchildren, retirement, returning to the dream
  • Building—again; growing our own food; growing ourselves

What’s next?

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The Last Time

(Note: certain details have been changed to protect individual privacy, but the essential facts remain the same.)

I’m at an age when it sometimes occurs to me that this may be the last time. The gnome and I, if we’re lucky, will be nearly eighty when it’s time to repaint the house and well over a hundred when time comes to replace our new metal roof. As inveterate do-it-yourselfers, it’s encouraging to think, “Well, at least we’ll never have to do that again,” when it comes to big jobs like roofing and house painting. (Not because we’re planning on going anywhere but, at least if we have our wits about us, we won’t be climbing any extension ladders!) I think of these as the good last times.

But there are other last times, other milestones I’m not so eager to meet. I wonder about the last time I’ll be able to climb our stairs. Upstairs is where our bedroom and only bathroom are; it’s pretty important to be able to make that trek. What if the time comes, like it has for my mother and some aunts and uncles, when my body just won’t let me do that anymore?

What about the last time we’ll kiss goodnight, the last time we’ll make love. It’s coming. Chances are when the last time comes, we won’t recognize it.

The memory lingers of the morning I got a sickening call that the husband of a young neighbor had been murdered just moments before. She remembered their goodbye that morning. Nothing special, just a peck on the cheek. Like most other mornings. How could she have possibly imagined it was the last moment they’d share?

One day after a marathon lunch gathering of old friends now spread far and wide—those things do tend to go on and on—we stood around our cars in the parking lot saying our almost equally long goodbyes, oblivious to the fact that in just a few hours one of us would get a call that her husband had been killed in a car accident. Who would have anticipated that?

Then came the day when a close-knit group of colleagues came together for one of our regular quarterly meetings. The day one of us who had been plagued for months by an undetermined ailment told us she was feeling better. Even joked that at least she’d lost some weight. None of us expected it to be the last time we’d see her.

Every decision we make—or don’t make—could be a life-altering moment. Almost always, we never have a clue. We don’t know what would have happened if we’d left the house one second sooner or one second later, or if we’d decided to take one route over another one, or if we said no instead of yes (or yes instead of no). Of course, it serves no purpose to second guess ourselves, but it might be worthwhile to recognize and appreciate the sheer randomness of everyday moments and events.

So, I think about these things. Maybe it sounds morbid. Not all that many years ago, I’d have squirmed uncomfortably at such thoughts. These days, though, I’d like to be aware. Not to constantly worry or agonize but to put myself fully in the moment, to appreciate the here and now for all that it is. Because it’s just possible this may be the last time.

Who am I and What am I Doing Here?
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Who am I and What am I Doing Here?

Hi, my name is Carole. Sometimes I’m known as the crone. A crone who lives with a gnome. There’s a story behind that. You can read about it by clicking “The Gnome and Crone at Home” in the Categories sidebar.

The gnome and I live on the side of a mountain in beautiful northwestern North Carolina. We’ve been here for close to forty years. That tells you something about how old we are. And yes, we are both parents and grandparents–proud ones, too, of course. But you’re not likely to find me blogging about that. Well, maybe just a little.

For decades, I worked in the public service sector in the field of workforce development, but I’ve been retired for five or so years. Now, you might indeed find me writing a bit about my retirement experience and what it’s taught me.

There’s something else: when we moved to our mountainside, all we had was a piece of newly acquired land. We camped while we built our forever home with our own four hands (and sometimes the little hands of our children, then six and nine years old). You’re likely to find a few pieces about how that went tucked into this site, too.

So, what am I doing here? Well, I’ve thought about blogging for awhile now. Apparently, even longer than I realized. As I began to set up my blogging account, I discovered I’d done that already, almost six years ago. I guess I got sidetracked by something else. That happens.

Most writers say they write because they can’t help themselves. Not me. Writing has been just as cyclical as other aspects of my life, a fact that was driven home when I came upon aborted tidbits from twenty years ago, then thirty. And when I found some very old copies of Writers’ Digest and a nonsense children’s storybook I’d begun more than forty years ago, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I’ve had writing aspirations off and on for most of my adult life. But, obviously, writing hasn’t been my all-consuming passion. Maybe that’s because I’m more of a potpourri kind of person. If not easily distracted, at least easily attracted to new and different projects.

Without a career to absorb my time and attention these days, I’m back to writing. This time it does kind of feel like I can’t help myself. No novels or short stories, though. Just as I’d rather sing jazzy numbers than listen to them, I’d much rather read fiction than try my hand at writing it. No, my writing tends toward the personal: essays, random thoughts and reflections, a little how-to, some garden lore and recipes, even poetry. Not the kind of thing that’s likely to find its way into a book (though I do have a couple of those under my belt–you can check them out on the sidebar, too). Fellow writers have suggested a blog is the perfect format for what I write. I’m ready to give it a go. Hope you’ll join me.

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