I am watching the river swirls of evening, and the water is inviting me.  It is the most beguiling and beautiful moment with the silk it swirls.  There is the silver mirror lying across it reflecting you, and reflecting me from a past love affair.  The waters are deep here below the city lights which watch for the sunset, and here it is — The time you hold me, so I take the darker silk from the forms of trees and life nearer the banks, and I gently pull it over us, for we wish to lie down now –  In this shining moment of silver and of gray and when we are alone, we embrace each other as once we did so long ago — The stillness warms up and the touch of finest silk enfolds us, and we know that we wish to be no other place or time than this now.

The roses fill tiny garden place with pink and petals to give us the sweet scent of our youth, and we touch them to one another faces — Perfume for you my love, Holy, sweet, and pure, and we begin to see our future, to share our past just as the night sky opens up leaving pink on the clouds where we lie.  It is pink, then purple, and night is falling, so catch this moment, and sail with me, for my sweet and beloved we have it all, more beauty than we can stand, more love.

Take these roses I have gathered from their first bloom, for only once this year will we know this hour.  We look around before the night to breathe in the perfect scent, to enfold ourselves in the shades of deep water only a river can bestow, and we ask; “Is this magic?”  “Is this what God wanted us to know all along?” — That this silk, these roses all are an abiding heaven, and our place in them is one simple and reflective drop on morning’s dew.****************************************************

Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” the book, to be featured on the next production of B464 with Kathryn Raaker, Memorial Day Weekend — Expected national and international broadcast of this show with Kathryn’s interview with me is apt to appear on one of your local Time Warner broadcast, so if you are interested in this hour long interview — Please check your local cable listings, and I would love to hear from you after the broadcast…  I will endeavor to answer all personal messages posted on Xanga regarding this program.  Kathryn Raaker is a beautiful soul, and is known in many television markets from New York City to the coast — Even China and European programing are all included.  It will also be broadcast on Hulu as well as U Tube.  Thank you Xangans for supporting me all the way, through my ill health and to this dream come true of a moment.

God Bless You All As Well As All Branches of service to America — Both soldiers and civilians — Our living and our own loses.  Let us remember all who have sacrificed for us, and those who remain unknown.  Thanks, Barb

I have dreamt of the day when, finally, I can take my book, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” to media which is apt to open up other media slots, so here we go this month of May — May 21, Radio at Fox Network, Cincinnati, WXIX Studios, when Kathryn Raaker who is among the more complex interesting people with whom I have ever talked will have me on her program this Saturday the 18th, and then I will be back at these same studios to film her show which will take place, as we go in studio — Make-up on and we should be filming for the 7PM show, just as my son and his family from Santa Monica are landing in Cincinnati from Los Angeles — so I must remember to breath, “Breathe,” they would say when the blood clots were killing off portions of my lungs; “Breathe,” when they thought that I was dying, and, “Breathe,” I still say to myself, for I learned Yoga breathing a long time ago;  For I am finally going to spread the message of my book all the way to Washington, D.C..

I think no less of being with Lee Hay on WVXU here in Cincinnati, her cool jazz  programs calm the tri-state, and her wonderful speaking voice will ask me to speak even more about how, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” came about.  I must thank the many friends who supported me on Xanga as I wrote the book — blogging to all of you, and some began to know it was a book, and some would wonder why I would then go back and erase chapter after chapter, for by late 2011, it was published — But one October night the daggers of pain would drive in to my shoulders, and the voice from within me would tell my husband to call the 911 number, and I would go in to the birth mode after giving birth 5 times, and especially to bring my Mary in to this world, I would be knocked out the voice inside,  my consummate angel requesting, “Breathe,” “Save your baby and to do this you must, “Breathe.”

I have this mission of unfinished business, a job to do, and months of healing from the lung infarction and the clots, plus that I must live on anticoagulants for the rest of my life seems incredibly unfair.  I was never a smoker, and I know that homes with smoke are not good for me.  My main home is in California, San Francisco, and either San Francisco or New York City is apt to become the first smoke free city in the world!  I did not know why I would become as powerless as a smoker makes themselves willingly just because I had a genetic mutation, and then I had to, “Thank God,” for I did not have the Beta Anti Alpha Trypsin horror where one’s lungs just decide to harden, for their gene pool is even unluckier than mine, but I would see every patient who had this disorder when I was at Hospice, and my heart would ache for them, for many of them were non smokers like me.  Until one cannot breath, then one does not feel the panic that crushes your lungs, and then in a moment — One does not know if they will ever have even the breathe to say, “Farewell.”  I saw my husband that night, not wanting to call, for wasn’t this just going to go away – and the answer would be, “No.”  I was going to need ICU care for days, oxygen and rehabilitation for months, and I still get so tired that I am useless around the house, but I am tired from other things as well — such as pain in my back or pain in my knees.  “We get so tired,” The angels say, “But you said you wanted this,” and now you are on girl — After all of this time, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” is about to be born to a nation.

It has been compared to, “The Grapes of Wrath,” and my writing has a distinct flavor of Faulkner, not something which I set out to do, but it is the way which I write, for I want you to feel, to taste, to touch, and even to smell the moments.  I cannot claim the moments, for they were lived by so many farm families among The southern Appalachian poor, that I am severed in to all of them, and I do not know how to say where my life begins and ends — Maybe it is the time when I begin awakening, and I know that I am a new person, but I am scratching my skin, and, “Do not tell me this is imagination,” for it is so clearly all of the fibers woven in that are me, for the past cannot be buried.  I dealt with it as of late when The Franklin County library of Winchester, Tennessee, which never told any of us who lived in Huntland, Tennesse and in the same county back in the 1960s that the library was for us, and my brother told me the librarian had opted to take my book down — A book, from a home girl:  First in Hollywood’s 2012 Book Festival for mixed genre’ called, “Wildcard,” then Honorable Mention in San Francisco, California for Biographical and Autographical material, not to mention all of the media coming up and the signing at Joseph Beth; If you go to The Franklin County, Tennessee Library, you will probably not be able to get this book.

I even made this known to their, “Friends of The Winchester Library,” and I got a note of about three words which said that they had no control over their library directress, to which I asked what their role is, since every, “Friends of anything,” board that I have been on, and I have been on several — We get to vote on anything and everything, for we do the fund raising.  I wish that I could tell you that it is because the book has some sexual content — as it does, or that it is language related.  Here and there, where people spoke naughty words, I wrote those naughty words down, but I think it has a lot more to do with Huntland Tennessee poor girls were supposed to stop breathing and living if we moved away, because in Franklin County, there has always been a small realm which does not want the outside world to come in or to know of the yesterdays when children could go hungry if they did not belong to the right church.  “Who determines the right church?”  I do not know, but perhaps it could be the, “Library Directress.”  God, I would learn, asked of us to come unto him in many ways, and he did not like gossips very much, and even when I was a young girl — I was not great at gossip or casting stones,  for it was hard enough just to get through each passing day.

It does talk about how close kin actually hurt and shamed me as a young girl, and that hurt so much, but I would go out in to this world, and I would learn that the greater percentage of incest and molestation happens among family members.  My book would have warned young girls to tell someone, to speak the truth to someone they trusted, for now — They can no longer call you a liar and stick you in a girl’s home for the mentally ill or for girls who were going to have babies, even with girls who had criminal offenses.  I would like to go and talk to those girls at some of those homes in, “Tennessee,” tell them my story of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” and help them to know they can get help now, and if someone threatens to break a stick over their back or whip them with a wire switch — Then, they do not even have to go back in to that place where they are so afraid.  You have no idea how hard it has been to get my book out, to tell how homes and families were separated, because the call for work north to build cars and make steel, work in brickyards, and pack boxes for shipment was seen as a greater need than for farmers and share croppers to make it on their own.

Truth has always been the most difficult pill to swallow, and we are learning that lying at the highest levels of government are routine, especially around campaign promise time.  I really think it would be great fun for a party to establish itself for the ordinary people who live in my picturesque thoughts of little white houses which dot our land on the theme of, “A dollar in every hand, and a chicken in every pot,” for it would be a lot more sane than lying about war and going off on whether communities should remove The Lord’s Prayer etchedin to a court house wall in the 1800s.  We deface our monuments to separate church and state at times, and this is just not normal.  One thousand years from now when they look back at how weird looking we were before we grew cameras for eyes, and had inward plumbing which turns all of our human waste into a little ash which the robotic people roaming the earth then might have — Then how will they know what we treasured, or will we all be buried in an atomic burst.  I do not know, and I cannot imagine, but truth is something which you can scratch over millions of times, but it will come forth in the light of day.

So, I am waving a banner of Thanksgiving, and I hope you will all check with The Franklin County Library in Winchester, Tennessee to see if my book, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” is part of their collection — They are on the internet; Look them up and call, but my brother said they took it down some days ago.  The sad part is that I love old friends there.  I love my few living relatives that I know, and my folks are buried just a ways down the road, but this is just how time passes, and sometimes, things do not change for the better, and my friends back there know that a lot of the book is fact.  To add some color and to not tell some stories as vividly as I might should have;  I made them a little softer — Some of when I first learned about men, which I did not know most girls I knew about knew about men before they got out of highschool, but my friend, Betty Ruth Larkin, and I were the youngest in our class, and I tried to learn from college books, and medical books, but sometimes — You just have to see or feel to believe, and sometimes nature is more powerful than that which keeps us pure, but is this not something young women should know?

Oh my God, I wish you could drive out of Winchester on highway 64 and watch the Appalachians begin their ascent from the south, and see the beautiful flowers on summer yards, the roses– even where houses might be so damaged as to fall apart, you will find roses, dahlias, and four o’clocks, and the little church spires, each which shares weddings, farewells, homecomings, and welcome anyone come Sunday morning.  It is all so beautiful, and young people are staying.  The towns are growing, and a farmer’s market is now open to bring the young in to have a little extra farm money.  There is so much which is beautiful, and there are places which are ugly, places where young people flew out of their cars drunk on graduation night from some years past, and that hurts a lot.  Yes, you should go there, and when I get back that way again, I think I will bring the Directress of The Library a dozen roses, because to decide a book which now has a national audience is not available must be a woman or a man who is extremely powerful, and I want to know her better.

I need to stop writing this blog, for I am forgetting, “Breathe, you want to save the baby.” “Breathe,” for you can get well again, and I do not have to be afraid anymore, because this is something which can heal.  Some of the wounds of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” are salt laden, and I cannot bear the pain from the tears of so long ago.

Blessings, Barbara

Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon, Kindle, Create Space — Signing — First week of June, Rookwood Commons, Cincinnati, Ohio — or also noted as, Norwood, Ohio, Bookstore, Joseph Beth

“Hello Mama,” You would hear me say, and standing at the door, your hands resting on your arms, you would have waited hours for us, and every sound would be, “That must be them, ” and finally, we would have made it back where you wanted to be — near the main road, for you had lived away from people most of your life.  I am so sorry, for you must have been so lonely, and I could read it on your face like letters which came with each new wrinkle which formed so slowly on your face.  “Get out, get out!”  Your hands would be damp like due, and each of our children was going to get hugged no matter that you were waiting, that you were tired, and time after time each year someone would be on the way back to Middle Tennessee, but homecomings never got old, and you wanted us to fill the house with old friends or get out and, “Loafer,” as you called it — Just to get out and to go see people who you had not seen in a while, and if we did the right thing, we would have found something new and pretty to show off and to wear.

The grand kids would be sitting with a piece of cake bigger than the mountain before I could get my suit case out, and Daddy would accept the hugs, keep the dogs off, and you would tell us how we were going to get to rest in the next day when we knew full well that you got out in the kitchen and banged pans like cymbals, for when the sun came up, the morning work was supposed to get done, and folks who slept late were wasting the hours needed to get the house ready for the company and to have dinner on, and so year after year — I would pull the covers over my head and hope to sleep just a little more, to wake up to the country morning, and then it would start again; “Slam”, “Crash,,”  “Bang,” and “Clang,” until we would give in, get up, and then the day was off right for you.  You would have cooked the farm breakfast, the eggs, biscuit, and sausage, but you knew that I was going to settle for a piece of your coconut cake, so over coffee, then you would begin to get the news.

I know that you have been close by a few times the past couple of years, for you are watching over all of us, and you are thinking that we will spread dinner on the ground and smell all of your pretty flowers soon — The happy times, your reunions, and I wish now that I had brought the kids more often, for how will they ever hear about your Mama living on an island in the middle of The Tennessee River and that she would come over to swap eggs and chicken for provisions for her Mama and her Dad.  Some called the place, Hiwassee, the Indian name for the place that had the grocery and the old village medicine people, and I cannot ever imagine an island that large considering The TVA came in their and flooded area after area to create lakes which would sometimes cover the big trees.  I need to know so much more about all of these things, for they are our legacy, and it was as if you never knew any of your mother’s life, for she had some demonic need to persecute you and us, so just go figure Mama, and remember that she was a horrible, “Gossip,” and she decided that you were the easiest to break down as you had baby after baby..  How could she have hurt you so much?  It just seems the way of things, that there is so much hurt, but I learned as you would learn that sometimes to those who inflict great pain — Then they will not know when, but they will have loss, loss as deep as the well which touches the water where only darkness can go, for the water is a table and it runs and runs under the earth and on out to the sea.  I have known about the secret wells for as long as I can remember, for I read about them in the fairy tale books at school, and then I began to see traces of souls swirling, swirling in the dark.

“Yes, Mama,” the pain has been terrible, but you always said that a big family was good, for some would break your heart, but some would soothe you like the warm quilts which you made before I was born.  We count on daughters, but to survive — Then some we let got free, for we start dying too soon ourselves, and we can only hope that time will open eyes with blinders to what was the reality of their youth, so my friend Roberta told me to no longer pray to God for help but to let God know that it is bigger than me, the evil, the lie, and how it all came about, so I did just that this year, for I have some life to live as well; So I handed the hurt and the pain over to God and said, “Now she is yours, for I cannot help her,” and she needs so badly to make her statement of hatred for the foolish men who sealed her fate the fault of something inside me.  She was my baby, and I loved her, but I have let her go, for I will not accept even a scant of her troubles that she chose brainless fools to give her first passion to.  She is now grown, and I know that some things just are not fixable, and perhaps I should have seen it coming, for she never could see the people who you became — So I carry on.  Mary shares her love so fully, and she needs me more than I can even give, but I will go to Mary, and I will know what love is — Abiding.  Mary had to find the wounded to care for, for she is a lot like me, and we three could hold hands out on Sand Mountain, and we could walk and talk on Decoration Day.

I felt you near me when I was sick, and I feel you near when I am in pain.  Karen and Matt sent me a beautiful bouquet, and in it are white roses, and I want to save the petals and bring them to you, for they will seep in to the ground, and you will know that I came home just to see you, ate some more coconut cake, and drank some coffee, and I am going to let those petals from white roses fall and flutter, seep their perfect scent and rejoice in you, in your sweet life, another thing which I could not fix — For until I was too old to understand, I never knew that I could have you.  I would like to know more about the Partin man who you wanted to marry, whose letters your mother hid away until you were a bride at 16, and I just want to catch up with you to fly on clouds together, and maybe we can find Dad and a DQ, take a ride in the old blue 1956 Chevrolet, the one we were so proud of when we drove it home — A fine car, the most beautiful car until Dad and you stepped out in that LTD.  What chatter there must have been on the mountain top when you drove up in that black LTD shining like the sun, and I can just feel the tongues of fire wagging, “Can’t you Mama?”  “Thelma and Amos are just showing off with that fancy car, and they were not fancy back when we knew them, and they shore ain’t fancy now!”  “Tongue Wagging,”  that was a good term for gossip, and I could just see a bunch of old mixed up dogs with their tongues hanging down their neck, smacking their lips, wanting to chew on a bone, because their mouths were so full of dead meat a dry bone sounded good after all that drizzle and drabble of old hen dogs yapping up a storm, “Thelma and Amos, and that bunch of kids — Just a bunch of show offs.”

You were better than them, because you would forgive and forget, and their minds, and their dark souls are going to be treading in that well where the water runs deep and dark, and there is no telling where the water ends.

I will be alright now, “Do you hear me?”  It is Mother’s Day 2013, and I have cheated death twice, and I hope to bear this world a while longer.  I want to see more miracles, and I want to see the sun spin, and “Blessed Mary,” to know that she is in every rose bud, for it is her sign, and it is pure and sweet like love, and like the beginning, the baby’s head, the faint of human beings when they feel the need for love.  “Happy Mother’s Day, Mama,” and I will miss you every year, but as I told you, “This year was harder,” for I know my own limits, and I know when I have to put some things away, for they just hurt too much — Like the day we put you away in your royal blue gown, your hands with our pink roses, a picture of James, and all of your work done. I just know that your breath is on the springtime air, so I will tell you, “Good Night, Mama,”  and knowing you, your apt to be endeavoring to find life boats for those in the darkest wells.  They never knew that underneath it all you had a heart of gold — And that can never be taken from you.

“Mother Mary, surround my mother’s resting place with roses, and make certain she knows that Jacob left her flowers I sent for her special day.  I will write you another letter, and I will send it in whispers across the sky.  “We loved you Mama, and the best of us has come from the crystals which sparkle on the hour as the chandelier of new day is streaking always across the east, for no longer must you wait until sunset to rest.”

A Prayer Letter For My Mother