Do you believe in ghosts?

I believe in them - I think there are a few categories:

Ghosts you Pay to See

I have been on two ghost tours.  The first was in Charleston.  We were there for a bachelorette party, and it seemed like a good idea to eat, drink, and then meet this random lady on the corner of a street downtown, and wander around Charleston with her.  We paid for this.  She was on a brochure in our hotel lobby.  So she had to be LEGIT.

We ladies were a little bit toe-up.  But the tour guide, well, in retrospect I can now say it:    she was high on crystal meth.  It has taken years of domestic litigation for me to recognize the symptoms.  She had scabs on her face, her skin was sort of gray, she was super thin and hyper – and she pointed this light thingy in the dark and said “looky, there goes a ghost right there!”  Her accent was not Charlestonian.  It was more Pelionian or Swanseaian.

The second ghost tour was in Savannah.  Bret was with me and he was no fun at all.  He is the second most skeptical man I know.  They put us in this old house, turned the lights off, and played a tape from that Paranormal Activity show.  I thought it was awesome.  Bret thought it was dumb and wanted to go back to the hotel.

Ghosts You do Not have to Pay to See (Yet)

The bests ghosts are pro bono.  In high school, my cousin Brian agreed to take me to see the Land’s End Light in Beaufort.  This ghost is famous.  It is either:  (1) a dead slave crawling around looking for its head that popped off;  (2) a dead slave walking to the hanging tree, but still with his head;  (3) a dead confederate soldier crawling around looking for its head that popped off (4) a union soldier;  or (3) swamp gases.

I was pretty creeped out to go see this ghost, but my cousin Brian was kind of a badass kid.  He knew how to operate most any vehicle, he shot and killed things and fished for big live animals in the Maye River.  Brian drove me around in a gocart when we were little, then a golf cart when we were a little bigger, then his own car when we were 12 or so.  Then he taught me to drive on Hampton County dirt roads and didn’t even laugh when I wisely noted “Did you know if you give the car more gas it goes faster?”

So Brian and I loaded up in the car and drove out to the site.  His version of the story required us to knock on the door of the church before we drove down and parked under the “hanging tree.”  Problem is, I really don’t think we knocked on the right church door.  This was the church we were supposed to go to:

I don’t think our church looked like that.  I think the church we knocked on was constructed in the 1980s.

So anyway, we knocked on some random church door and we got back in the car and we parked under the hanging tree. 

And we turned off the headlights and we waited.  And y’all, we saw it.  This light came bouncing down the road.  It was not a motorcycle.  It looked like this:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubEX-mSy5TI&feature=related

(this link has a video of some really smart southern people and the Land's End Light).

Except our light changed colors before it disappeared.  It was thrilling!

A few years later we decided to go back.  This time though, we took my sister and some other people.  I am not sure who all went with us, but if I had to guess it was Brian’s friend Nick. 

Brian’s friend Nick was loud.  He talked about that duo Kriss Kross and how the lyrics needed fine-tuning:  “Kriss Kross will make ya’ JUMP JUMP . . . A rattlesnake will make ya’  JUMP JUMP . . . two-boys-with-their-clothes-on-backwards will make ya’ JUMP JUMP.”

It just wasn’t the same.  We just weren’t reverent enough for the head-or-no-head dead slaveorsoldier/swamp gases.  I tried to get Brian to tell our story to our new companions, to set the mood.  But he wouldn’t.  In fact, if you ask him today about the Lands End Light, he acts like he doesn’t know what you are talking about.

One of the most fun pro bono ghosts is Alice.  Alice died over a 100 years ago of a broken heart.  Her mean Daddy wouldn’t let her marry the boy she loved.  So the deal is, you walk around her grave 8 times – either forward or backwards, or both.  Then you stand there and Alice tries to take off your wedding band because she’s jealous.

So Bret and I, and my sister Ginny and her husband Kick, and his sister Sarah and her husband Chris - - we all went to Alice’s grave.  Ok, I will admit, when we did this, we were all grown ups.  We were all well educated, and most of us had master’s degrees.  And I even had a KID.  No matter, we wanted to see a ghost.  Or at least Sarah and I did.  So we walked around this grave, we walked forwards and backwards . . . and nothing.  I think it was Kick’s fault.  Because he is the MOST skeptical person I know.  He has a special facial expression that means “No.  I think not.” 

I have seen this expression when I talk about the aliens.

Family

But I have actually seen two ghosts who were family members.  I don’t like to think of them as “ghosts” – because that implies they were creepy in some way.  Really, they were just checking up on me.

When I was super pregnant with Maggie, I saw my paternal grandfather at the foot of my bed.  I don’t remember him, he died when I was little.  But he was there clear as day.  He was kind of pacing, looked a little worried (I had been sick).  But it was definitely him.

I had also seen my Noni.  My Noni passed away in May of 1999.  It was too soon.  We had only just begun to form a real-life friendship.  We had been shopping together and watched Titanic on VHS (turned up REALLY loud – she was hard of hearing).  We had argued about politics and Days of Our Lives.  She had an immense dislike for the internet.  She just knew people would start naming their children somethingsomethingDOTCOM.

She had expressed her dismay at the colors of my bridesmaids dresses – “navy may as well be black and you may not have black bridesmaids dresses it will look like a funeral.” 

Noni - far right, in an appropriate bridesmaid's dress.

If Noni disagreed with you, she said so.  She would say "I know you think you're right but I KNOW I'm right."

She could be so infuriating.

And then she was gone.

5 months later, Bret and I were watching Real World and I felt just gross.  Something was wrong.  My body had been poisoned.  There was no way I was pregnant, because you had to try for like 6 months to get pregnant.  I made Bret go buy a test. 

While he was watching TV I learned the truth - - all those warnings Peggy gave me . . . she was right.  Forget all those other girls, Ashby had to be extra special careful:  

I could get pregnant by kissing too much, or lying down on the sofa with a boy, or accidentally brushing against someone in the hallway at school.

That night while I slept, I dreamt I was in Estill. 

I was walking down the street holding someone’s hand.  It was my Noni’s hand!  Her hand was soft and warm. 

I looked up at her and said “Guess what Noni?!”

“What, Ashby?”

“I’m PREGNANT Noni!”

And she said . . . “Well, I already knew that, but I thought you’d want to tell me yourself.”

Zen Peggy

I learned everything there is to know about crisis response from Peggy. 

Though Peggy can lose her marbles when the new plaid sofa is not upholstered correctly, or she can’t find her diamond rings again and she is convinced someone came in the house and stole them, or when Wes gets food on one of his new ties, or she is late for a church event (Dammit kids, get your white asses in the car you are making me late for BIBLE STUDY!)  . . .

she transforms into ZenPeggy when a true crisis arises.

Everyday Crises

If you choose to birth three children, there will be everyday drama.  Like when I was in middle school and had a zit.  See, my zits were rare.  I didn’t have one of those gross-crater-faces, and I didn’t have blackheads.  What I had were single solitary welts.  The welts usually appeared someplace central, like the top of my nose, or between my eyebrows.  And I just knew that these welts were an invitation “Mock Ashby!  Look how ugly Ashby is!!” 

And I would cry.  How could I possibly appear in school like this?  I would sob and beg not to go to school.

Peggy knew the first way to avert an everyday crisis was to throw money at the problem.  Peggy bought me this skin-colored zit cream that was supposed to cover and yet simultaneously dry up, scab, and disappear a zit all at once. 

The effect was disgusting.  First, because my skin is the color of white vinyl siding.  There is no variation, there is no shadowing, it’s just white.  So if you dropped a smudge of Clearasil medium tint on a zit between my eyebrows, it looks like I have run into a clay doorknob.

The second way to avert an everyday crisis is to try at-home remedies.  Peggy swabbed the zit with rubbing alcohol.  Then, she iced it. 

If those home remedies didn’t work, she’d put some prescription strength pharmaceutical-sales-rep-sample of hydrocortisone cream or maybe prescription strength pharmaceutical-sales-rep-sample of hemorrhoid cream on the zit. 

(In my household, prescription drug gift-bags were considered home remedies).

If money or home remedies didn’t work, she would impart wisdom:

Ashby, no one in your class is going to notice that zit.  Everyone is thinking about the zit on their own faces, or how they have B.O., or how bad their hair looks. 

No one is thinking about you. 

Now get your ass to school.

Crisis averted.

Quiet Crises

Once Peggy was driving up a hill in Greenville.  It was a high-traffic area, and she was in a rush.  Peggy has things to do.

She got to the top of that hill and something told her to pull over and stop. 

This was the same voice that told her to marry Wesley Willingham Lawton, Jr. 

It was the same voice that warned her that filling out the birth announcements for my little brother before he was born was probably a bad idea – since Mary Margaret Lawton came out with an extra accessory.

So she stopped the car and pulled over on Faris Road.

And a few moments later, through her windshield, she saw a woman slowly climbing the hill.  The woman was panting and carrying something heavy.  The woman was exhausted.  The woman was walking as fast as she could but her fast was not fast enough.

Peggy rolled her window down “Can I help you?  Do you need a ride somewhere?”

The woman told Peggy that she did, in fact, need a ride.  That she was late for work, she had no ride and her job meant everything to her. 

This woman had lost all hope as she climbed that hill, but that she prayed to God – to please help her.  So God interrupted Peggy’s train of thought:

“must plan Sunday School lesson, must buy Will new jeans – why oh why has he already ruined the jeans I just bought him?  I need to go back to weight watchers and quit eating slime.  Ashby has been so awful lately do we need to get her professional help?  Will she ever stop behaving like an ever-lovin-bitch?  Ginny talks and talks and talks and now she wants to have a friend over this afternoon and that will mean two little girls talking and talking and talking and I don’t know if I can handle it . . .

Is Days a re-run today?”

And God said:  PULL OVER.

After Peggy took the lady to work she went about her day – she bought some ice-milk, rented some movies, took some film to be developed at Graham photo, and picked a fight with the guy at the Chrysler place.

Serious Crises

Once when I was little, Mom and Dad and I were on our way back from the mountains.  Mom and Dad owned a (haunted) mountain house back then – more on the haunted part another time. 

We were winding our way down the mountain roads, slowly turning left then right, when I heard Peggy say:

                Wes, that was an accident.  Stop the car.

Mom and Dad pulled over on the side of the mountain.  They told me to be still and quiet.  And they left me in the car. 

I didn’t see an accident, and I was too young to know what “accident” meant.  All I know is, they were gone for a bit, and then Peggy came running back to the car.

She got our towels out of the trunk.  And she ran back to this thing called "accident."

I never asked her about it later.  I never asked why she insisted they stop for strangers, or why towels were needed.  But I will never forget her demeanor that day. 

Stopping for the car accident and helping the people who were hurt was a decision she easily made, no different than other swiftly-made decisions:  like the time she stretched scotch tape across Ginny’s bangs and cut the tape off, a new method of trimming hair in straight line. 

Or when I was 2 years old and I WOULD NOT SHUT UP about wanting my ears pierced, so she poked a safety pin through both my earlobes.  

In Peggy’s mind (and now in my mind too) in a crisis, whether yours or someone else’s, you don’t sit around and ponder whether you will be “welcome.”  Welcome is not a concept for consideration. 

You don’t worry about how “uncomfortable” you may feel – or how you might really just make them feel uncomfortable so maybe it would be best not to go. 

Priorities are instantly rearranged and renumbered, like on Netflix.  You stop the car, you go to the scene and you apply pressure with a towel. 

Or, you drive your car to the strange hospital, you bypass the giftshop because no one really wants that crap, you ride the elevator to the appropriate hospital floor.  You open the door, you sit in the uncomfortable chair.  You show your face.  You hold someone’s hand. 

You say all the wrong things or nothing at all but you show up. 

And that is 80% of crisis management Peggy style. 

The other 20% is luck – being lucky enough that someone tells you about the crisis at all.

Linen Button Downs, a Woozie, and a Pirate

I took a break from busting up marriages and driving back and forth to Publix to go on a few recent trips.  First, Bret and I celebrated our 15^th wedding anniversary at The Cloister at Sea Island.

Have you ever been?  You must go.

No, let’s try that again.  Have you ever been to The Cloister?  (Now pinch your nose and tilt your head back.  Kind of talk in the back of your throat.  Use your best Charleston accent – or a fake British accent works too – Yoouu Muusst Visit the Cloister).

When we arrived, there was a little guy on a golf cart waiting outside.  God must have told him the Joneses were coming, because he had our room key and everything ready.  God knows rich people appreciate this kind of thing, and since we were pretending to be filthy rich for a weekend, God played along. 

When we got to our room, which was unbelievably large and glamorous, I noticed someone had spread rose petals all over the room.  It caused a zap in my brain – near the part where the OCD monster lives.  Then, the butler asked me if I would like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times with my breakfast. 

I had already decided I was not going to clean up those rose petals, and being asked to choose between newspapers was just too much decisionmaking on vacation, so Bret and I got the hell out of there and went to the outdoor bar, where we met Dr. and Mrs. Burns.  Dr. Burns is retired doctor.  I know this because EVERYONE addressed him as Doctor Burns. 

But, I found Mrs. Burns much more interesting.  She was probably in her 70s.  She was fabulously dressed.  Mrs. Burns showed me some “jokes” she had printed off her email account.  Mercifully, they were actually funny.  I was scared they would not be because the bar TV was earnestly set on 24-Hour-Fox-News (which is what I think is funny). 

Mrs. Burns was drinking Chardonnay.  I do not know what kind, they did not tell us.  In fact, the bartender mentioned that this was a 5 Star Hotel and they did not carry Kendall Jackson Chardonnay.  It was beneath them.

So Mrs. Burns and I drank fancy Cloister Chardonnay, but hers was special because she drank hers from a Woozie:

Rich people like Woozies, Lilly Pulitzer swimsuits, and linen Ralph Lauren button downs with no undershirt.

The Burns couple got to talking about their children, and I learned one was a doctor, one was a lawyer, and one was a CPA.  After they briefly argued about where their daughter went to medical school (Mrs. Burns was convinced it was MUSC, Dr. Burns was certain it was Mercer, you would think they would know – I assume they paid for it), I asked Mrs. Burns, so what was your secret?  How did you turn out such great kids? 

She said:

“I told them to hang their own shingle.”

Well, I’m a lawyer.  “Hang your shingle” has a special somewhat terrifying meaning to lawyers.   Mrs. Burns did not know I was a lawyer, so I asked her “What does hang your own shingle mean to you?”

She told me that education was the most important thing.  Mrs. Burns told me that she taught her children to learn a skill, so no matter what happens, they are not dependent on others for their livelihood.  Her kids would be responsible for themselves, and “hang their own shingles” if necessary. 

This was a variation of the same advice Peggy gave me when I was a little girl.  Peggy told me: 

Ashby, you do not know what life has in store for you.  You do not know if you will marry, or if you do marry that your husband will take care of you.  Or, what if you do marry and something bad happens?  What if he passes away?  What if he leaves?  You have to learn to do something to take care of yourself. 

You need to learn to be more than someone’s wife or some kid’s mother.

But you also need to take tennis lessons.  Because the good girls know how to play tennis.  And you will never meet a good man if you do not know how to play tennis.  Now stand up straight and hold your shoulders back.

A few weeks later, Bret and I took the kids on a cruise. 

This was ever so slightly less fancy than the Cloister. 

First, we slept in a closet.  It was a comfortable closet, but it was definitely a closet.  Also, the amenities were different.  The Cloister had the most luxurious soaps and shampoos  (I stole them all).  The Cloister had a little bowl of chilled cucumber slices for my tired eyes. 

On the Carnival boat, our amenities included a Bic razor, Arm and Hammer whitening toothpaste, and Breathe Right Nasal Strips.

If you do not believe me, here is a picture (I stole those too):

The Carnival Cruise prefers Breathe Right Advanced Nasal Strips because it opens the nose more completely.

At the Cloister, we had great food.  Dinner was a highly choreographed affair.  We had two waiters who appeared on either side of our table and simultaneously glided towards us, placing silver covered plates in front of us. 

We sat right in front of that fireplace.  I dared Bret to request some ranch dressing so he could dip his food.

Then the waiters simultaneously lifted the silver tops to reveal a tiny mound of food.  A moment of silence.  Then, one waiter would quietly describe what we were eating.  The food tasted better than anything you could imagine.  The food was crazy delicious.

It was glorious.

The Carnival Cruise had an ice cream machine.   We allowed the kids unlimited access to this ice cream.  And they ate it 3-4 times a day.  There was also an unlimited pizzeria, and lots and lots of booze.  The Carnival foisted booze on us at every turn.  Booze in cute cups, booze in plastic fish with a straw out-the-mouth, and tangy Chardonnay in plastic cups (Chardonnay should not be tangy).   All we had to do was give them our room key-they even added the tip in for us so we didn’t have to make a decision!

Since everyone on the cruise had booze and ice cream to numb our senses, entertainment wasn’t really a big deal.  Instead of a chilled bottle of Champagne in our elegantly appointed room (The Cloister), we had a towel animal.

Also, there were random photo-ops, like the time we left the dining room and a Pirate appeared.  There was no pirate theme on this boat, and no talk of pirates, so we were confused.  Also, this was a pushy pirate – he said “Smiley-Smiley!!” and after the photo was taken he shoved us aside and said “now GO!”

It's kind of menacing how he holds that plastic sword under my babies' throats isn't it?

Maggie learned to do the Thriller dance on the cruise.  She also helped me pick out some DUTY FREE(!) perfume.  Despite his best efforts, Houston did not once break his arm while running across the slick deck, skipping along the edge of the boat, or slinging himself down the spiral slide.  The kids sang karaoke – and they chose my going-to-court themesong, Fighter by Christina Aguilera, which pleased me.

We stopped at Nassau and the kids decided to try the dual slide. 

Bret and I watched them climb the fake Mayan Temple together, wait in line together, and giggle.  We watched our babies simultaneously board the top of the slide, and effortlessly glide to the bottom.  There was a moment of silence when our babies were dropped in the bottom of the pool.

Then they simultaneously lifted their heads above water and shouted “we want to do it again!!” Their joy was crazy delicious.

It was glorious.

Yes, she is going to be taller than me.  But I am meaner.