The Pink and Plaid

Note to a friend in Capetown, South Africa

Miranda Hull — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:12:36 +0000

Max, it’s hurricane season, so we sometimes have afternoon showers. All this week has been clear, with highs around 90. It’s very humid. We live right beside the Ashley River, so we see lots of egrets and blue herons and hear insect noises and frogs singing at night. Spanish moss hanging in the oaks and crepe myrtles. I’ll take some pictures. It’s physically lovely. Hubby loves the humidity. Very backwards socially and educationally, but like anywhere if you have $$$ you can turn your eyes away and pretend not to see the great poverty. The population is very polarized racially, even worse than NC. The economy is not varied and robust here and the government schools rank 49th out of 50 states consistently on most measures. Beautiful international resorts and charming old city on peninsular area where hubby works right on the harbor. This is”where” the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Grand old homes now bought up by the monied from other parts of US and world.

Why I’m Not Laughing At Mark Sanford and Jenny

Miranda Hull — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:37:08 +0000

One of the stories that’s going around is about the potato salad that made its own, high speed trip to Coosaw in the back of a police cruiser because some fool forgot it and Jenny was pissed. Another story has Jenny tipping the airbrusher on the Vogue photoshoot between two and twenty thousand for the nice, upscale EHarmonyesque picture to accompany the schmaltzy, biased article. To be fair, these are merely rumors of Jenny’s excess, while Mark’s deeds were confessed by him as having been real. Any way you slice this big, messy Johns Island tomato sandwhich with overflowing Dukes, these two are pitiful examples of Narcissistic personalities drowning in their own hubris. As a children my brothers and I had the experience of having parents who subjected us to such antics. Today we like to call these experiences the “gifts that keep on giving.” If the adult Sanfords were really the Christians they so vocally claim to be, they would stop this high profile war in the press, withdraw from the spotlight, and focus on how this morass has and will continue to wound their children.

View from the Oak

Miranda Hull — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:26:54 +0000

Debilitatingly overeducated twentieth century woman with literary bent and Celtic roots overcomes odds to live happily with family in post-modern South.

We have just moved into a birdhouse, my husband, son, and I. Our view through the Spanish moss and the silver green oak leaves is not bad. The other birds in our oak flit back and forth, past the palmetto to the crepe myrtle. They chatter busily from first light to way past dark. We are accustomed to having the sandy soil between our toes, so the rhythmic swaying of the branches has put us a bit off. Especially when the late afternoon currents of warm air change the predictable swaying to a rustling, microclimate burst. It’s hurricane season, so we’re never sure which direction the limb will sway.

Our son was born in the Capital of the New South at the end of the last century, our century. After much waiting and many costly (in all senses of the word) and failed reproductive scientific experiments, we anxiously anticipated his arrival. The day he was born broke both of our hearts, for it was discovered that his tiny heart was imperfect. Could it be fixed? Would the patch job fail or last until the repair? Would the failed patch hold? Would he eat and grow? We walked barefoot through the streets of Baghdad and Kabul alone and unarmed every night, not daring to release a sigh. We grew weary. We became sleepwalkers. We grew grateful. He thrived.

After five years of wandering we brought our son to this Old South Coastal City which we had lived happily in for two years during the early days of our marriage. Its beauty and charm had enchanted us years before. In this century, his century, we hoped the old seaport would warm and cheer us all. He grew and became beautiful and strong in the salt and the sun. A decade passed from his birth. We were unprepared for the changes that came to the old city. But together we had all learned to bend like the willow in order not to break. We had to leave our solid-seeming home with a real willow our son climbed out back. From our new perch high in the oak we are still bending to the sound of the wind that moves with the tides and lulls us to sleep together.