Born with a crayon in my hand and the world at my feet, I am well acquainted with opportunity and privilege that comes as a result of hard work. My parents told me there was nothing I could not do; they simply told me to figure out how I was going to do it, equipping me with every tool in order to do just the same. That mentality was of a direct result of their parents, and their parents before them, understanding that the only path that would be cut would be the path they would cut for themselves. Hard work, and the grace of God, would always be the constant that would allow for food to be placed on the table.
I am familiar with the blue-collar work force on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the agrarian laborers of the Mississippi Delta. Wherever it may be, it is the daily grind of any job, regardless of geographical location, or type of position, that allows for a paycheck. However, it is not usual and customary in the above two locations for daily, monthly or yearly business plans to include a large margin for creativity, especially when it comes to that of a farmer. It is in repetition, one row after another, one field after another, one year after another, that America and the world, is fed or clothed, by the US farmer.
Although Daddy brought home a paycheck from Ingalls Shipbuilding Company in Pascagoula, Mississippi, he came from a long line of men who farmed the water including fishermen, shrimpers, and oystermen, some even knitters of nets. His great-great-grandfather, Stanislaus Beaugez, had come from Paris through New Orleans in 1819, only to directly settle in Ocean Springs. My maternal great-grandfather, John Christopher Willis, farmed in a small community called Tybie, located in East Central Mississippi. He had a medium, self-sustaining family and community farm. Though harvesting on land and sea are vastly different, the lifestyle of any farming community is similar. From my observation, they have the following in common: Hard work and the need to find beauty in and around their simplistic way of living.
It sometimes seems that simplistic beauty gets lost when privilege, and/or opportunity are complicated with busyness. I now realize, I was one of those people who lost my ability to absorb and inhale the color that surrounded me. I have learned that everyone has a price tag, even me. My investment of time and hard work, in conjunction with a marriage, equated to money. And that money had indeed been able to purchase an abundance of goods and services.
But, I discovered, greater than goods and services purchased, was time spent by me that I could not say, and still cannot say, was necessarily profitable. In retrospect, I reflect on whether or not I was smiling on the inside, which would have enabled me the ability to genuinely smile on the outside. My genuine smiles were few. That is not to say that there is anything inherently bad about what results from hard work, i.e., money, goods or services. It’s only when those became such a distraction that I failed to enjoy simplistic beauty.
With over a half a century life experience, there are many stories that I could tell and I do love to tell stories. One of those stories is told my memoir Outer Edge of Grace. It is a story of pain, loss and the search for redemption, written about my personal experience on being a caregiver for my son. In the process of writing that story, I found myself, and continue to find myself, in a quest for the discovery or, rediscovery, of simplistic beauty in everyday things such as the colors of a sunset, the scent of wisteria after a rain, or the feel of new holly leaves in spring.
I have a hard time just sitting still, or staying focused on a single task at a time. One thing that helps me to center is to just rest in one place. Or, take a photograph of something that I think is interesting. The more I look at the big picture, the more intricate the parts of that big picture become. Recently I took a photograph of a very old flatbed railway car, rotting on rails no longer used. As I stood in the waning daylight, my eyes began to focus on the color imbedded in the rusting iron and the rotting wood. Among all of the things my eyes were able to capture one was a fresh green sprig of grass growing out of the middle of the old timbers. It seemed to me it was there, if for no other reason, than to let me know that beauty can be found in anything if I truly look long enough.
Taking the time to stop and be attentive of the color surrounding any of us is the gift of awareness. But honing the skill of “absorption and inhalation of color” is what I hope to pass down to my children and their children. That kind of awareness translates into being aware of my surroundings, using as many senses as I can. My mother used to take us to the beach. As we went over the last hill and got to where we could see the water in the Ocean Springs/Biloxi Bay, she would say, “Look at those diamonds bouncing off of the water.” The light jumped around on the Bay and looked like millions of diamonds. That’s appreciating simplistic beauty.
I’ve stood on beaches from Kawai to St Bart’s to Sicily, and mountaintops from Maui to Switzerland, the Great Smokey Mountains and The Rockies. What difference would it make if I had never really stopped to soak in the colors? I would have missed the entire point.
I’ve also learned that money is able to afford some opportunities such as traveling, formal education and beautiful things. But, money cannot buy the salt-of-the-earth kind of roots that I have been given. When I was six years old, my sister, mom and dad put the tent, sleeping bags and whatever else we needed for a week on top of our green VW bug and headed to the Smokey Mountains. While we were there, Daddy took me into the middle of a mountain stream one afternoon, where we just sat for a while, mostly in silence. Just as mama had pointed out “diamonds on the water,” daddy showed me the beauty of a blue mountain sky and the sound of clear water trickling downstream.
I made the Mississippi Delta my home for the best three years of my life. Age and time have a way of being able to give a bit of perspective and have taught me to be a little more appreciative for the richness of that which colors the world around me. Everyday God chooses to give me a new sunrise and a new sunset. It only takes moments for the sun to slip above or below the horizon. I am not always able to capture the moment, with my eye or my camera. But when I am able, I am trying to take in as much as I can, aware that God is coloring the Delta.
The pictures on the following pages are reflective of colors absorbed and inhaled through my lens when I was able to stop long enough to breathe. I hope they give you reason to pause, as well.
