{"id":622,"date":"2020-08-14T13:33:58","date_gmt":"2020-08-14T17:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=622"},"modified":"2020-08-14T13:34:03","modified_gmt":"2020-08-14T17:34:03","slug":"somebody-might-think-im-dancing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=622","title":{"rendered":"SOMEBODY MIGHT THINK I\u2019M DANCING"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Maw and Dad Junkins 1952<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction, and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. Available at: NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon.<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

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<\/b>Everyone\u2019s heard the joke about why Southern Baptists don\u2019t make love standing up\u2014Someone might think they\u2019re dancing!\u00a0 My mountain Georgia kin felt that even square dancing was the work of the devil. My father\u2019s mother was convinced of it.\u00a0 However, that didn\u2019t mean she didn\u2019t love music.\u00a0 Most of what she heard on the Grand Opry was acceptable.\u00a0 Anything sung by the Chuck Wagon Gang was first rate.\u00a0 While driving home from a dental appointment recently I listened to a CD of Gospel music, and thought of my grandmother.\u00a0 You\u2019ve heard the songs, or I hope you have.\u00a0 Songs that my older son says sound like a truck driving down a bumpy dirt road.\u00a0 Titles like \u201cTurn Your Radio On\u201d and \u201cSome Glad Morning.\u201d\u00a0 In my mind\u2019s eye, I can still see my grandmother tapping her foot and smiling\u2014as close as she ever came to dancing.\u00a0 Her special favorite seemed to be \u201cAfter a While.\u201d\u00a0 It begins, \u201cAfter the sunshine comes the rain, after heartbreak, grief and pain.\u00a0 There will come a better day after a while.\u201d And then there is that wonderful spiritual \u201cSwing Low, Sweet Chariot.\u201d She nodded her head all the way through this one. Check out the link to Dee White\u2019s wonderful rendition of this one.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Except for the joy of those wonderful songs, Grandmother Junkins never allowed herself much of what little fun was available.\u00a0 Maw, as we always called her, was always trying to \u201cget to a better place.\u201d\u00a0 She read the Bible every single day, though with less than one year of hit-or-miss schooling, I\u2019m surprised she could make sense of it\u2014and more surprised she didn\u2019t find some of it X-rated.\u00a0 She took everything seriously and always seemed uneasy if someone was having a good time in her presence. Once as a child when I laughed at one of her family stories and asked her to tell me another, she frowned and said, \u201cWell, one time they was this girl that allus thought about having a good time, when what she ort to be studying was how to git to a\u00a0 better place.\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n

That wiped the smile off my face!<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I don\u2019t mean to condemn her.\u00a0 Now that I am older than she was then, I understand her better, and know enough of her hardships to be amazed she could find anything to be cheerful about.\u00a0 She was born into a large fundamentalist religious farm family.\u00a0 At fifteen, she married a neighborhood boy who was known to be a jokester and a prankster, and maybe that\u2019s what drew her to him.\u00a0 If so, she was sorely disappointed.\u00a0 He believed in a good time, all right\u2014for himself\u2014but, as far as I could tell, he was never considerate or kindly toward Maw.\u00a0 Without a doctor or a midwife, she birthed ten children and managed to raise the first nine to adulthood.\u00a0 By the eighth, she much later told my mother, she was hoping to goodness and mercy that was the last of them.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 When she told Dad she was expecting the tenth, he said, \u201cWhy did you want to do that for?\u00a0 I didn\u2019t aim to have no more.\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I have long realized that I inherited a lot from Maw.\u00a0 I have her height, her straight back, and her bony feet.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I seem to have inherited most of her health problems\u2014fallen arches, hammer toes, heel spurs, knee problems, hip problems, bone spur in the neck\u2026.I could go on, but you get the picture.\u00a0 But here\u2019s the difference:\u00a0 Thanks to Medicare and Blue Cross, I have been able to get relief and sometimes cures.\u00a0 There is also the fact that I birthed only two children\u2014with the help of an obstetrician \u2014and have had a loving, supportive husband for 55 years and counting. I ought<\/i> to be happier than Maw.\u00a0 I have much more to be happy about.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In addition, I have come to appreciate her deep faith, which brought her most of the joy in her life.\u00a0 And Maw, I\u2019m sure you are looking down with relief that I\u2019m working on achieving the level of faith you wanted for me. Those wonderful Gospel songs are helping me get there. Sing on, Dee White: at this link:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/deeann.h.white\/posts\/10224202721758927<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Maw, you\u2019ll just have to look the other way when you see me dancing! \u00a0 Everyone else already does.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/h3>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction, and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. Available at: NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon. \u00a0 Everyone\u2019s heard … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}