The house
seems smaller.
Silent.
Matured
pecan trees
shelter
our past.
Another
lifetime.
Clover
spreads where iris
once grew.
talya
Musical Pairing:
the home place
What’s in a Name
The rules of phonics were pounded into our heads from the start of Kindergarten. Sound-it-out. Find the vowels, short or long?, blend with the consonants, syllable by syllable, beware the silent e… We learned this as soon as we mastered the Alphabet Song.
These same teachers who preached the Phonics Game couldn’t follow their own simple rules when it came to pronouncing my name.
As a kid, I was quiet and shy and preferred to live beneath a cloak of invisibility. My name made this impossible. On the first day of school, when the teacher came to my name on her seating chart, she stared blankly, trying to twist her tongue into the proper shape to summon the correct sound. Seconds ticked by feeling more like slow motion minutes while kids turned and stared, knowing my name would soon be butchered. This was cause for rip-roaring laughter. This was the Phonics Game in action. Everyone knew my name was next, she had already perfectly pronounced Timmy Stone. I always came after Timmy Stone and before Clay Wade.
School was predictable. Life was predictable. Everything was predictable other than my name.
I wanted to scream, “Just sau̇nd ət au̇t!”
I can blame Daddy for my odd name. He was a farmer and a man of few words who chose the occasion of my birth to become involved in such girl related things.
In 1962, living in the Mississippi delta surrounded by farmland, he came up with the strangest name ever to be given a baby girl born in the Osceola Memorial Hospital. Back when the top five girl names were Lisa, Marie, Susan, Karen, Linda I got Talya.
Talya Tate. Oh the alliteration.
I was kər-səd!
Daddy alleged he came up with the name while reading the book South Pacific (a Polynesian chick? a hot war nurse?) What if he had been reading To Kill a Mockingbird?
Regardless, I think beer drinking was involved.
As I’ve become acquainted with more writers, I’ve met many who have changed their names to something more unique, a name more reflective of their personalities. With my name, Daddy gave me permission to be different from Day One. It just took me a while to figure it out, to sound it out.
He’s been gone eighteen years, but I still have his copy of South Pacific. The pages are yellowed and brittle and smell of a different life. Someday soon, I shall read it.
talya
fyi…
Talya is a small village in the Holalkere taluk near Chitradurga district, Karnataka State, India.
The name Talya is a Hebrew baby name. In Hebrew the meaning of the name Talya is:Dew of heaven.
The baby girl name Talya comes from the Indian word which means, “Reach bearer.”
Means Born at Christmas. From the Russian name Natalya.
Tonka Truck Tale
After crafting my letter to Santa, I proof-read my little sister’s. At the top of her list, a Tonka Truck.
“No, Staci! That’s a boy’s present!!!” I was incredulous. Although we both had tomboy tendencies favoring tree climbing to tea parties, she couldn’t waste her main gift on a boy’s present. Papa Creecy would buy us boy presents any time we wanted, at the mere mention of a matchbox car or a baseball bat…
Grateful to have been saved from such a misguided gift, Staci erased and erased and erased until she almost ripped the notebook paper. Over the bare worn spot, she wrote Baby Alive Doll in large block letters. There could be no confusion on Santa’s part. Much better, I thought.
Satisfied, we taped our letters near the rock fireplace in the living room. Santa would spot them the moment he slid down our chimney. I felt a bit sorry for Staci—her letter was really messy with all that erasing. I would have started over with a clean sheet of paper…
Christmas morning was cold and blustery and WHITE. Snow on the most wonderful day of the year! But the snow would have to wait. We crept into the living room wondering had we really been good enough? I had doubts.
Shocked, we stared dumb-struck at the Christmas miracle. Parked underneath the Scotch pine tree—a shiny Tonka Dump Truck and Front End Bucket Loader. Santa really didknow what we were thinking.
I was surprised to receive anything that year after making fun of my sister’s letter to Santa.
We played with those trucks for years, and to this day they sit on my mother’s back porch. Tonka Trucks are guaranteed for life, you know.
talya
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.
Musical Pairing:
Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jackson 5
“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder
― Laura Ingalls Wilder
