Life On Snob Hill: A Messy Slate

I will forget these things, but I’d like to forget them more slowly, more surely.

—Joe Wenderoth, Letters to Wendy’s

There is a piece of slate now hanging by the front door here on Snob Hill. Upon the slate is a statement of love, written and decorated with hearts by Father, who carved a frame to hold the slate. The slate is a piece of a rescued blackboard from the Cape Girardeau High School where two grandmothers, on paternal, one maternal, attended — both must surely have sat at attention and viewed this very same blackboard — this black board.

The blackboard came to us this weekend, complete with the message of love, now somewhat degraded. Years ago, when Father gave this framed piece of slate to Mother, he decorated it with his message of love. They hung it over a fireplace in the kitchen and never erased the message, as it were a painting. So we have inherited both a physical object and something far less tangible and more precarious. We wanted this to hang by the front door, with a piece of chalk tethered by a thin cotton braid, so visitors, if so inspired, could leave us a message. But with the handmade message of love to a departed Mother, isn’t something we can bear to replace.

Sometimes what we remember and what we feel is painful, and it’s difficult to express, and so we have to find ways to put language on impossible feelings that we never anticipated we’d go through.

— Venita Blackburn

“According to Wikipedia, “Marshak, Stephen in his Essentials of Geology, slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic rock. The etymology of slate also tells us that it was traditionally a small, smooth piece of the rock, often framed in wood, used with chalk as a notepad or notice board, and especially for recording charges in pubs and inns. The phrases "clean slate" and "blank slate" come from this usage.

So, one of us writes: Yet our slate — as well as our own, more metaphorical slates — are neither clean nor blank. I hung the framed slate by the front door, but now I cannot bear to wipe it in preparation for another message. Just as chalk has touched the slate, I see — I know — that my parents touched. They marked each other. That touching created me and I still feel the contours of their marking upon me. I’ve lately become a bit obsessed with collecting examples of actual writing by my grand- and great-grandparents, and especially from my Mother.

Dad recently gave me thick folder of recipes that included a precious few written by her hand. I may never make the old casserole (she was not an inspired cook, much less a foody), but I could stare at her handwriting for a long time, trying to imagine her concentrating on transferring the directions onto a notecard. She wanted so desperately to be a good wife, mother, housekeeper and hostess.

There are many ways to divide, to demarcate one’s life. I’ve lately realized that I went for a long time wrestling with my daddy issues. Then transitioned to my mommy issues. I see now that really, all along, these have been merely me issues.

I’m obsessed with that part of life — these confined spaces where there’s no acceptance, there’s no big healing. You’re just right there in the crack of a catastrophe.

— Venita Blackburn

I grew up in the days of schoolroom chalkboards. Sometimes I was tasked by a teacher to wipe the board. There was a long tray beneath each large slate for holding chalk — white and pale green, blue and yellow. I don’t recall red, pale or otherwise. I remember the boxes of chalk, usually at the far ends of tray, with the word “dustless.” There’s really no such thing as dustless chalk because chalk is dust laid upon slate, just waiting to wiped away to make black space for another message.

So what to do? Should I allow Dad’s chalk dust to remain, still proclaiming the mark he and Mom made, but knowing the message will slowly fall from the slate. Do I shellac it in a sad attempt at preserving it, if just for a bit longer? I worry that would be like looking at the same sentiment carved into the trunk of tree, wondering who the hell the people behind the initials were. Or do I, let others do the dirty work for me, waiting for some visitors to drop by, wipe it clean and leaving the message: Sorry we missed you!

To which, I would be compelled to add: You have no idea.

Quoting Wenderoth again:

Yes, our homes are dust. Don’t pretend you are surprised.

Life On Snob Hill: A Christmas Elegy

By CB Adams

The season is turning to Christmas

I'm longing to be by my dear mother's side

So…

I'm coming home for Christmas

To be with my family

And loved ones so dear

—Manny, Cabral, Mathus

We have always loved the song “I’m Coming Home for Christmas” on the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ Christmas Caravan album. Years ago, it felt depressing. Now it seems nostalgically prescient.

2023 has been a year of elegies of Proustian proportions, remembering things past. Seeing that phrase — Proustian proportions — suddenly seems hyperbolic, but isn’t that what profound emotions often feel like — outsized, hyperbolic, compared to the the situation that evokes them?

It’s in the feeling that’s Proustian, the recognition that memories are all that’s left us. The time is gone, and so, too, should be the expectations that things like the holidays are repeatable, immutable. We are not good at change, and learning to embrace change — the reality of it — is a painful process.

This is about the notion of home and Christmas — of an internal Christmas compass that has always pointed true-north homeward. But that cardinal direction points to somewhere else now. Growing up, home and holiday were a given, just part of the unexamined family life. As we grew and matured, the holidays had their touchstones — Granny’s angel food cake, Grandpa’s cigarette smoke, Mee Ma’s divinity and bourbon balls, Mom’s pressed cookies. They all are sense memories, including a sense of being safe and happy and intensely loved.

Even after we moved out, first to college, then to marriage, early careers and then our own children — our Christmas compass still pointed to that “other” home, the one in which our memory mothers still shuffle through our memory houses, preparing the usual Christmas memory-cheer.

Our mothers are gone now, and with them, those times and that version of our family. We struggle this year to put into words how or why we felt this small, but profound, shift in our compasses. Our mothers worked hard to create those special holiday memories, and we have always turned — internally — to the comfort that they represented. Thus, Christmas was always “back there.” It was a time and place, though we didn’t acknowledge it at the time.

Now we are reminded of the song “Bookends” by Paul Simon: “…Preserve your memories; They're all that's left you.” Our mothers exist only in memories now. The phrase “yehi zichra baruch” that our Jewish friends have shared, resonates with use because those memories are a blessing. And with their passing is a waning magnetic energy. Our compass has swung to a new true north — here on Snob Hill. Or maybe it swung years ago and we’re just now noticing it. We worry about becoming the middle-aged version of what we call the younger generation’s obsessive navel gazing. We may notice the wrinkles around our navels, but it’s the gazing that’s the issue.

As Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová wrote in “Falling Slowly,”:

…Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice
You'll make it now…

This shift is perhaps small yet certainly profound. We think of the place — now memory bound — of where we point when we point to home. We now think of that home as being our own home. And we certainly hope that we created — sometimes intentionally and sometimes inadvertently — that sense of home and holiday for our sons. We hope they have a Christmas compass that points to Snob Hill.

Yes, it’s about the changing of generations. It’s about the passage of time and worrying that we weren’t present enough in the past. We hope that past is now prologue for the family now. True north may have shifted, but we know it is still true. And yes, it’s about loss. You can’t have an elegy about the future, that honor goes to the past…and memory.

We end, thinking of “Homeward Bound,” another song by Paul Simon:

…I wish I was

Homeward bound

Home, where my thought's escaping

Home, where my music's playing

Home, where my love lies waiting

Silently for me…

Life On Snob Hill: A Thanksgiving Elegy

By CB Adams

We live in selfish times.

We were originally writing this to be a diatribe about the profound disappointment we feel about certain portions of our family. Part of us still wants to vent that spleen, unpack their actions and motivations— and give the proverbially dirty laundry a thorough airing out. We can’t avoid thinking of the current state of our family’s Thanksgiving as akin to the Black Knight’s “tis but a scratch’ scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Members of our small family have been hacking away at this family’s tradition (see turkey wing above) for several years. Yet we continued to think of those amputations as just scratches. That’s on us. Cue Depeche Mode’s “Wrong.”

But who, other than ourselves, would want to read that diatribe? Our cooler collective heads have prevailed, even though we are still committed to exploring the (what seems like sudden death) current state of the Snob Hill Thanksgiving. We must embrace the end of one set of Thanksgiving traditions and expectations as well as the unknown contours of the holiday in the future. Yes, we are already thinking ahead because it may very well take at least a year to decide how we will celebrate. To define the ultimate Snob Hill Thanksgiving takes time and attention.

It is our belief that Thanksgiving is a single day, as opposed to that following holiday — the quanchrismukkah that has bloatedly become an entire season (nay, fourth quarter) of the year. We remember when the word “season” was reserved for the natural progressions of nature’s calendar. We further believe that in the single Thanksgiving day, our efforts should be on gathering and gratitude. But, because it is a single day, there’s a certain pressure upon it that other celebrations do not encounter.

This year, more than half of our already small-and-shrinking family seceded from the established family traditions. They avoided the celebration that we’ve hosted for more than 30 years and left us feeling disrespected, abandoned and hallowed out. We can’t control the actions of others, and we know full well that expectations are just resentments waiting to explode. Hence, our original impulse to rant and rave King Learishly. Or Sally Brownish in the Charlie Brown Christmas: “All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.”

Seating on Snob Hill.

Part of us, still does. We want to wave the metaphorical finger (middle and otherwise) at those family insurrectionists who created the loss in our Thanksgiving. But we won’t because the situation now (and next year and the next and so on), just is. We are not without an understanding of — and a sympathy for — the pressures that family expectations exert on the holidays — especially with the so-called ‘blended families’ of which we are members. Choosing one side of the family over another is a Sophie’s choice (if you don’t understand that analogy, read the book or at least watch the movie), and it sucks for the side that’s left on the platform.

We won’t live in the past (even though Thanksgiving has always seemed about trying to preserve at least something of the past, at least the past’s tradition). Isn’t the past not even really past (to bastardize from Faulkner)? We have not arrived at this juncture without precedence. Our Mother lamented the slow-and-then-all-of-a-sudden for many years before passed. As we discussed the family dynamics, she used almost the exact same words as Sally Brown — all she wanted four our family was our fair share. That share, of course, is defined differently for each contingent within the family. We live in selfish times, after all.

The New Thanksgiving will not be judged by number. It may the American Way, but bigger is no longer better. We liked adding extra leafs to the dining table, squeezing in an extra, mismatched chair or two to accommodate our family and guests. But the Snob Hill Thanksgiving reboot, Part Deux, 2.0 will be better (curated?) by being smaller. That’s our choice in these selfish times.

We, along with Mother, noticed a couple of the youngins in our family attended some of our past celebrations stoned because we assumed that was the only they could “get through” the holiday. We find this an odd reaction (other than the usual callowness of youth) because our Thanksgivings were almost always completely drama free. These under-the-influencers contributed to the disruption of our notion of family, but we believe in attraction rather than promotion (or obligation). If you don’t want to gather at the Snob Hill Thanksgiving, or you have to get stoned to endure it, then perhaps best to decline the invitation. In recent years, some have even come, sat at the table, declined to eat because they had another table to attend, then left. If that’s the level of attraction we can elicit, then absence is indeed a better option.

Sad.

As we (and our family) have aged and parents/grandparents have passed away, the Norman Rockwelllian ideal of Thanksgiving has become outdated and unrealistic — much as we valiantly fought to maintain it. That ideal is no longer sustainable (if it ever was), at least in our family. We have great memories of Thanksgivings past, and those can’t be taken away or tarnished. If anything, in the light of the future parameters of this family’s Thanksgivings, those memories will be ever more brightly burnished. That famous Rockwell is at best a hoped-for ideal, an ideal that could probably never have been achieved.

We tried.

We liked trying.

But we are done trying.

And that is okay. It has to be. We do not understand, nor do we condone, the idea that in order to create a new tradition, you must kill the old. The two-thirds of this family that seceded from the old union are pursuing their own ideal Thanksgiving. We wish them well, knowing they could very well find themselves in our situation sometime in the future.

As we contemplate the future Snob Hill Thanksgivings, we will continue to focus on quality (certainly no longer quantity). We want to share with those who nurture our souls and the spirit of the day. To those bound to us by family ties, we can’t help but cue up that old Electric Light Orchestra song “Don’t Bring Me Down.”

We live in selfish times…we probably always have.

The plate awaits.

Life On Snob Hill: The Stuff of Bittersweetness

We were reminded this weekend of the adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” This can be interpreted or applied in any number of ways. For us, it is a bit of an admonishment as we look at some long-wished-for family items that we removed from the house of a now-widowed father. One the one hand, we could be pleased that we “finally got” some items that we’ve wanted for years.

On the other hand, we obtained these items only after the death of a mother and a father’s decision to sell his home of 30-plus years and downsize. That’s the price of these pieces. It makes us assess our own home, especially as we just celebrated the marriage of a son. In those wedding preparations, we never heard the phrase, “Setting up housekeeping” or “Building a home.” Those were common phrases when we were married, and we heard it often in reference to our own parents’ post-wedding responsibilities. Wedding gifts were mostly directed toward the necessities of young newlyweds as they set up their new household.

Our son and daughter-in-law have been together for several years, and they explicitly have stated they don’t need “necessities” like a toaster or everyday dinnerware. Instead, they have requested funds for their upcoming European honeymoon. Fair enough. That’s their reality. Ours was different.

When told we were free to pick up some asked-for family pieces (is ‘heirloom’ too grand a word?), we felt gratitude and excitement. When we arrived, we also had the opportunity to unpack some storage bins and review the contents of a couple of cabinets. There was a yin-yang about this process. As the mid-century bun warmer was discovered and bestowed, there was a visceral, sense-memory of the smell of crescent rolls wafting up as the shiny, penguin-festooned warmer was passed around at parties and holidays. The piece is still in pristine condition — proof of how lovingly a mother had taken care of this wedding present. How small it seems now, and how small those crescent rolls must have been compared to the supersized ones of today.

But the hope and love and care that gleamed from its surface is shadowed by the loss of the person who cared for it. Preserving it, even. We would gladly return it to have her back.

Our domicile on Snob Hill is no manse. It is a modest-sized home, yet perfectly sized for us. When the other set of parents downsized, we made a few cross-state trips, U-Haul in tow, to bring home the furniture and other items that we wanted. Then we faced the challenge of how to incorporate those items into the tight, puzzle that is our home. It took months after each trip to rearrange and accommodate those items — usually at the expense of pieces we had acquired at estate and tag sales. Family pieces always trump items we had purchased more recently.

That still holds true. We are now the proud owners of a grandmother’s wrought iron, glass-topped table. It came from the best home furnishings store in southeast Missouri (which may or may not be damning with faint praise). This grandmother had impeccable taste, and we were anxious about whether or not it would be transferred to us. It was, and it is now displacing a larger similar table that already fills our sunroom. Hello, Craigslist and Marketplace. We will be sad to see that table go (and we just had the seats and backs reupholstered last year), but after repainting the ‘new’ table, we are happy.

Not everyone wants to be the steward of family heirlooms — or has the room for them. We have certainly curated the pieces that will best fit into our home. Some, sadly, will go out of the family. We can’t take it all, and the next generation won’t take most of it. There are plenty of stories about the youngins not wanted grandma’s china or tchotchkes, and so we go into that here.

We filled the bed of our truck with the items (and there are still others we want). We were reminded of and couldn’t help feeling acutely the sentiment in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” in which, a city daughter visits her mother.

“‘‘Oh, Mama!” she cried…I never knew how lovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints,” she said, running her hands underneath her and along the bench. Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed over Grandma Dee’s butter dish. “That’s it!” she said. “I knew there was something I wanted to ask you if I could have.”’

We feel the need to ensure that we didn’t seem greedy or grubby, yet still wanting to emphasize how much we wanted certain items. It’s hard to know where that line is. We are still stung by the words of the mother who so carefully cared for that bun warmer, one of the rare times when she was handing over another family heirloom: “If I give you this, I better not find out you turned around and sold it!” There’s context to that incident, not for here — and maybe not for ever. It’s probably moot now that she’s gone, anyway.

And that’s just what happens. Couples make a life together. Create a home with stuff — something borrowed, something blue, something new. We can feel all the hope that goes into housekeeping because we experienced it. But nothing is forever. At some point — sometimes sooner (divorce, death, etc.), sometimes later (as in this case) — the stuff of coupling must be released.

Driving home with the truckload of items, items we remembered from our formative years, we hope to honor the transfer of tangible, touchable family history. Yet it is also a truckload of bittersweet reminders that family ‘time’ is never static, always changing. And can merely haul that notion around.

Which brings to mind the opening stanza of Mark Terrill’s poem “Down At the Gate”:

“You could never add up

all the years it took

for this time to finally come.”

Family heirlooms destined for Snob Hill.

Salmon Fishing On Snob Hill

Somewhere between Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing In America and Paul Torday’s Salmon Fishing In the Yemen lies our Snob Hill. And these thoughts…

Just as there are changes in the seasons and changes in current fashion and even changes in attitudes/changes in latitudes, to borrow a phrase from Buffet, there are changes – evolutions – constantly in motion on Snob Hill. We will celebrate our 25th anniversary as stewards of our piece of Snob Hill this coming August.

How time flies.

We are watching with interest the transition of a few properties here on the Hill. One house has stood empty but well maintained for approximately 10 years. The owners, part of the old-old guard, moved nearby to the inherited home of a mother, and use, as best we can fathom, their Snob Hill location as one of the nicest storage lockers ever. To be clear, the house is not abandoned, per-se, because the owners visit often and their yard man appears regularly to cut grass, trim bushes, and collect leaves.

We also have two elderly widowers on the Hill, and their two fates – though ultimately the same for all of us – are as individual as they are. One, Frank, is a cancer-battler who has kept his wild white hair, tousled up like Heat Miser in The Year Without Santa Claus, and who has been pursuing in his later years a modest career in stand-up comedy. But that is another story. We have nothing else to say about him now other than we refer to his slow strolls up the lane with a vocal, protective schnauzer named Aggy as “Franks Wild Years” in deference to Mr. Tom Waits.

How time ain’t nothin’ when you’re young at heart.

The other widower, Grant, hung onto his independence with a tenacity that was not sustainable, yet was also somehow admirable. His wife passed several years ago, and his own infirmities corroded his mobility, his moods and his ability to care for himself. Yet he insisted in both driving one of two vehicles – a PT Cruiser and a Ford Expedition – living out his remaining years at home. He gave it the ole college try, which required a couple of years’ worth of home healthcare providers who provided inconsistent quality to his care and wellbeing. When this arrangement because obviously untenable, the family moved him to a nearby assisted living facility just before the COVID-19 pandemic.  

How time runs like a freight train.

But it is his wife, Angela, to which we return. She was a master gardener associated for many years with our city’s botanical garden. She was known locally in the70s and 80s as the “Herb Lady” and people would clog the lane each spring to purchase plants she raised in her small greenhouse. We recently conversed with a woman at a nearby farm who, when she found out where we lived, described exactly this occurrence.

As might be expected, a master gardener saved some of the best plants and garden design for her own purposes. Yet, as cancer slowed her down and her passing, her once-admirable garden rooms with their English cottage influence and secret pockets, have gone to seed, to use an old phrase. They are now lush with poison ivy and oak, Virginia creeper and the invasive bugaboo honeysuckle. Still, many of the established plants still exert themselves through the weeds.

Such was the case this past week with a planting of a unique, salmon-colored iris. Among the world’s irises (and we claim to be no experts in the botanical sense), these are off the beaten path. Yes, we began to covet these irises. We desired the irises. They became an item of recurring conversations along the lines of “Wouldn’t those look lovely in certain parts of our own gardens? We know just where to tuck them.” Yet, as co-presidents of the Snob Hill Neighborhood Association, being caught as poachers would be both unseemly and just plain wrong. So we did the right thing. We called one of the siblings. We were not piggish. We asked to be allowed to dig up just a few rhizomes. To our delight, the sibling not only said “please do,” and added something about her mother’s legacy.

Like naughty children, we entered our neighbor’s overgrown gardens. We brought along our cell phone with the text from the sibling, just in case we were questioned about our activities. We carried a small shovel known as a “poacher’s spade,” which seemed only appropriate. We were careful where we removed the rhizomes, choosing to remove only those whose absence would be most unnoticeable. We also found another delicate blue iris, which we also chose to add to our garden.

As we planted the new flowers, we also realized how many of the plants on our property came from neighbors – clumps of ornamental grasses grabbed from a nearby yard with a handwritten Free! sign, clumps of hostas that a Snob Hill neighbor gave us after their son didn’t want them, and a new yucca that our next-door gave us after yanking it unceremoniously from her hill. We were also surprised this year when a neighbor from across the street had a “bumper crop” of tomato seedlings and offered “as many as you want. “ They weren’t our preferred heirloom varieties, but for free, we gladly accepted some.

We have come to prefer such botanical hand-me-downs in part to save money, but also because we know the plants are from our terroir, our local environment. They have histories. They also connect us with their owners. Sometimes, the “owners” are just the latest in a long line of plant hand-me-downers, like the plants from our parents’ gardens we shared in The Family Sedums.

We are surrounded by so ways of marking time – wall clocks and watches, holidays and birthdays, calendars and cadences, seasons and solstices, apps and emojis. We observe Snob Hill time, which is marked by the way of our sons visit (partners in tow) and park where they once played in piles of leaves. By the way neighbors move on, pass on, or relinquish their independence. By weather events, like the ice storm that disarmed trees whose branches broke like gunfire, like the tornadoes that spared Snob Hill but left us without electricity for a week, like the unnatural, eerily quiet skies during the days after 911, by the cautious, distanced chats in the lane as we sheltered in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. This kind of time almost always begins with “Do you remember when…?”

 Taking a bit of someone else’s garden is like trying to carefully scrape a bit of color from someone else’s painting. It could be a type of theft. It can also be a gift. A share. Like asking for Grandma Myrtle’s chicken and dumpling recipe and having her transcribe the faded, crumpled, stained 3x5 card in her recipe box, then hand it to you. It’s a loving act of assimilation. An opportunity to take someone else’s approach, or practice, or creation and   make it your own.

 In our desire, we thought of ourselves as iris thieves, which led us to recall something from Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief:  "Collecting can be a sort of love sickness. If you collect living things, you are pursuing something imperfectible, because even if you manage to find and possess the living thing you want, there is no guarantee they won't die or change."

Which in turn led us to recall some lines from the Goo Goo Dolls’ Iris:

“…And all I can taste is this moment

And all I can breathe is your life

And sooner or later it's over

I just don't wanna miss you tonight…”

The Bastard Bush of Snob Hill

"Furled" by CB Adams

Is there such a thing as a bastard in the plant world? We don’t really know.

There is, of course, the Bastard Cabbage, the Bastard Toadflax, and the Bastard Mustard Plant, but these are only common, vulgar names.

We know that in the human kingdom that bastard is an old term to signify a son who could not inherit (ala Prince Herbert’s “What, the curtains?”) because he was not born out of his father’s (ala, the King of Swamp Castle’s) marriage even though he was the proverbial fruit of his father’s loins, even though such fruits can be of either sex. 

This, compared to illegitimate daughters who were still eligible be married off, or sent to a convent, or employed as a servant, or dreamed Cinderella dreams. How perfectly medieval.

We have pondered the etymology and gender of bastard all summer (leading to an unproductive sidetrack of reading-up-on William the Bastard) as the bush established itself in the yard. And even if bastard today tends to be gender specific (even though history says not), we might still feel free to apply it to the bush, to which we have (rightly or wrongly) assigned a femininity.

After all, we regularly hear young women refer to each other as dude, dick, and son of a bitch (which is doubly perplexing to us), so why not bastard? Especially given that the root of bastard is thought to be from the Latin, bastardus, or perhaps bastum, which is the same as “pack saddle,” which may stem from the idea being of a child produced from a relationship with a traveler.

You may be wondering what all of this has to do with a bush because if it is just a question of genetic lineage, then bastardism need not apply. Let us quote one of our favorite Tricky Dick Nixonisms: “Let me say this about that.”

We have adopted a bastard bush.  Or more appropriately, we rescued this bastard bush from landscaping euthanasia. For more than 20 years, this bush thrived at the edge of a Mother’s deck. It was not indigenous to this property, having been transplanted from its original home at our Parent’s former domicile, where it had thrived for at least a previous 20 years. 

 It is a common bush with common name, Rose of Sharon, but to Mother, it is a vulgar name, a name not to be spoken because Sharon is the name of the woman a former brother-in-law married after divorcing our Sister. Mother had enjoyed, maybe even loved, this bush for 30 years, but through no fault of its own, she condemned it now because its moniker was a too-painful reminder of one our family’s great trials (to say nothing of the damage to our Sister and Nephews).

And now we understand from whom we inherited our tangled associative tendencies, including the list we compiled of all the names we would never name either of our sons, drawn from all the people who had offended, bullied, us sometimes in our lives.

So Mother had decided (now ten years post-divorce) that she could no longer endure the bush’s presence. She summed up her animosity by way of a phrase from Flannery O’Connor’s Mrs. Shortley: “That bush is an abomination!” (Rose of Shortley, perhaps?)

And like a medieval king, it was off-with-its-head, except it was off-at-the-roots.

Mother had mentioned off-handedly that she was going to have her gardener remove the offensive shrub along with some invasive bamboo, a sap-drooling Mimosa tree, and some clumps of decorative grass that no longer interested her. Always on the lookout for free plant material, we asked if we could have it. This pleased Mother because she was glad for it to live, just not within her line of sight.

So that is how the bush came to Snob Hill. And with it we felt it required a new name. If Mother inquired about the health of the bush, we wanted a name that would not conjure unpleasantness. We tried:   

• M-m-m My Rose of Sharona, by way of The Knack

• Rose of BetterNotPickIt, with thanks to Neil Young and Linda Ronstadt

• Rose HasItsThorn, from GNR

• Nat King Cole’s Ramblin’ Rose, or was it the Grateful Dead?

• Neil Diamond’s Cracklin’ Rosie

• And even Rose of Shawan, after a family surname and a great-grandmother who grew them

But none of them stuck. As didn’t Rose of WhatsHerName (too polysyllabic). And neither did Rose of Slut nor Rose of Crotch Jockey, keying off Mother’s preferred nicknames for that person. “It’s not fair to the plant,” she said.

For a bit, we promoted a sex change and referred to it as Rose of Sharon, but pronouncing it like Ariel Sharon, with a long o and emphasis on the second syllable. This proved unsuccessful. Not many got the joke. And most importantly, Mother was not a fan. It may of failed for her because this alias still reminded her of you-know-who, in the same way that gosh-darn-it is only a mask for the real intent of god-damn-it.

Mother didn’t say why, but we suspect it may be that she leans less toward the Judeo and more toward the Christian tradition. There is a certain form of irony in this because 1) Rose of Sharon is mentioned in the Bible, 2) said plant is not a true rose, and 3) is not the same plant as the bush we know today. If only flora confusion were the root of unrest in the Middle East…

One half of Us took a cue from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath suggested Rose a Sharn, as a tip of the hat to this bush’s hardy and resilient character. But the Other Half quickly dismissed this as: Too Joad family. Too Beverly Hillbillies. Too Gomer Pyle.

Besides, the Other Half of Us said, “That whole titty thing at the end is indelible in all the wrong ways, and I’m not talking about breastfeeding in public.”

In the end, we chose Rose of Snob Hill. It’s safe. It’s appropriate. And it’s accurate. Rose is happy on the hill and is thriving, especially with the mild and wet summer. His/her roots are going deep. And we can all live with that.