The Old Magnolia

 ✨remembering✨

Her daddy’s parents lived on the right side of the tracks, in a big white two-story house with six bedrooms, two living rooms, a billiards room, and a glassed-in porch that caught the afternoon sun. The porch always smelled faintly of lemons and magnolia blossoms. Her grandmother’s plants lined every window sill… ferns and spider plants that seemed to stretch toward the light like they were praying.

Two old magnolias framed the front of that house. Their thick branches reached out like arms that had seen generations come and go. One of them had low limbs… just right for a little girl to climb.

Whenever she missed her daddy, she’d scale that tree until she reached the tippy top, where the air felt thinner and the world looked softer. She’d wedge herself between two sturdy branches, knees scraped, hair tangled, heart aching. Up there, the sun couldn’t find her, and neither could the truth… that her daddy was gone and wasn’t coming back.

She couldn’t bear to let her grandmother see her cry. That same grandmother had already lost her baby boy. That was a sorrow she prayed she’d never understand. So instead, she’d climb.

And the higher she went, the freer her imagination became.

Some days, she was a fairy doctor tending to the wounded bugs and butterflies, mixing potions from leaves, mud, and rainwater gathered in the creases of the bark. Other days, she was a pirate, perched on the highest branch, spying for enemy ships through a toilet paper tube she’d turned into a telescope. And sometimes, when the wind whispered just right, she’d close her eyes and pray. She wanted to get close enough to heaven that maybe God Himself would reach down and hold her while she cried.

Her grandmother would come to the porch, apron tied around her waist, calling her name in that gentle but worried tone. “You come on down now, baby. You’re too high up there. You’re scaring me half to death.”

She’d pretend not to hear, smiling to herself, watching her grandmother’s hands flutter on her hips. But eventually she’d climb down, twigs in her hair and dirt on her arms, and they’d sit on the steps together while her grandmother told stories about how her daddy used to do the same thing… how he’d climb that very tree, disappearing into the green, and how she’d stand there calling for him too.

That’s when she started to wonder if her daddy had been hiding from something even back then. Maybe not from his mama, but from the heaviness he carried even as a boy.

Years passed. The magnolia grew taller, and so did she. She stopped climbing trees. Stopped going to that big white house after her grandparents were gone. Life carried her elsewhere… to love, to loss, to a divorce she never saw coming.

But life has a funny way of circling back.

When she bought her own little house, with her own two hands and prayers, there in the front yard stood another magnolia… grand and familiar, like a whisper from her past.

Every morning, she’d step outside barefoot, coffee in hand, dew still cool between her toes. She’d look up at those branches and smile, telling that old magnolia stories of her childhood… the days she hid from sorrow in another tree, the grandmother who loved her with quiet strength, and the daddy she never quite stopped missing.

Sometimes, when the wind brushed through the leaves, she could almost hear them answering. Almost hear her grandmother’s voice again, soft and steady: “You come on down now, baby. You’re high enough.”

And standing there in her yard, years later, she realized that magnolia had given her something she hadn’t known she needed. It rooted her. It reminded her that even grief can bloom into grace.

That tree became her peace. Her prayer. Her proof that even the hardest things can grow into something beautiful again.

“Storms make trees take deeper roots.”

The Bayou Taught Her

✨grateful for the journey✨

She once thought the ache in her chest was her destiny…

that the bruises she carried were the language of love…

that silence was safety…

and survival was enough.

For so long…

she was the girl who wanted to be chosen.

A child in a woman’s body…

standing in doorways that never opened.

Trusting men to make her whole.

Believing love meant proving herself worthy of staying.

She poured herself into their emptiness…

fed them pieces of her spirit like bread to the hungry…

and called it devotion.

But it was starvation dressed in hope.

She didn’t know then…

that she was the offering.

That she was the prayer… the gift… 

the holy thing.

That her softness was sacred…

her silence… a hymn.

Her very presence… a kind of miracle.

Until he showed up.

Smooth-tongued, eyes like stormlight after rain.

And she mistook his pull for peace.

Not knowing yet… his hands carried ghosts.

Her mother’s rage.

Her father’s leaving.

Every whisper that told her she was too much…

and never enough.

He broke her spirit wide open.

Split her soul like cypress struck by lightning.

But in that splintering…

she saw herself.

Not the wounded child raised from fear…

but the wild-hearted woman

the bayou had been humming about all along.

When he left… the night was still.

Even the frogs held their breath.

And she stood there, barefoot in the mud,

watching the moon lay silver across her scars.

Realizing… every wound was a map.

Every tear… a trail.

And it all led home.

To her own soul.

Now… she leaves braids in her hair for protection.

Each twist a spell of remembrance.

Each strand a promise to the wind,

she will never again forget her worth.

She walks barefoot through the bayou at dawn.

Mist kissing her ankles like forgiveness.

Her heart steady now… fierce and calm.

She knows…

the river doesn’t chase what’s already meant to flow with it.

And when her children look to her…

they see a mother who rose from ruin

and turned it into rhythm.

Who learned that being chosen was never the prize,

being whole was.

She teaches them without words.

That they are never too much.

Never not enough.

That love is not earned through suffering.

That their spirits are their birthright.

She thanks the man who mirrored her pain…

for every wound that became her teacher.

For showing her the reflection she had refused to see.

For being the storm that set her free.

Now, when the moon climbs high

and the frogs begin to sing,

she smiles into the night…

because the story was never about him breaking her.

It was always about her remembering

who she’s always been.

The wild daughter of the water…

the woman the bayou itself rose up to protect.

Silver

✨a story✨

The woman’s name was Etta Mae LeBlanc, though most folks just called her Etta, or when she got riled up, that wild LeBlanc girl. She lived on the edge of the bayou where the moss hung low enough to brush your hair if you didn’t duck, and the air always smelled faintly of sweet rot and rain.

Her hair had gone silver too early …long and soft like moonlight on still water. But it suited her. Folks said it matched the old soul behind her mischievous grin. Etta was a wild child at heart …ornery, barefoot more often than not, stubborn as the roots of the old cypress. She’d been raising herself in one way or another since she was ten, when her father drowned on a fog-thick morning, his boat never making it back from the far side of the bay.

Her mother, Josephine, had done her best …though “best” was a word that meant something different in those days. Three men came and went, each one a little worse than the last. Josephine had a way of choosing men like she chose dresses …beautiful at first glance, but stitched with unraveling seams. Etta learned early that love could be loud, could break plates, could vanish in the middle of the night. So when it came time for her to love, she loved hard and reckless, as if trying to rewrite what she’d seen growing up.

Her family was split clean in two …like a pecan cracked down the middle. Her father’s kin were Bayou Royalty: bankers, restaurant owners, members of the country club where they still whispered about the “poor choices” her mother made. Her mother’s side, though …they were the real folks: cotton farmers, mill workers, people who smelled like earth and sweat and knew how to fix what broke. Etta carried both sides in her blood — grace and grit, polish and fire, and the war between them played out quietly behind her eyes every time she looked in the mirror.

These days, Etta lived in a weather-worn farmhouse at the end of an old gravel road. By day she worked in town …part-time at the parish office, where she filed papers, answered phones, and kept a candy dish full for whoever wandered in. By evening, she came home to her small patch of land: a few goats, a stubborn rooster, rows of okra and tomatoes, her young son, Lyle, who had his daddy’s tall slender physique and his mama’s wild streak, and her daughter, LuLu, with her mama’s laugh and her daddy’s quick wit.

Life wasn’t easy, but it was hers.

Then came the man from up north.

He arrived one late spring afternoon in a dust-coated pickup, moving into the old cottage across the road …the one that had been empty since Old Man Dupree passed. He was quiet, broad-shouldered, and out of place …a New England kind of handsome, with hands that didn’t yet know how to work a shovel. His name was Cal Whitmore. Folks whispered that he was running from something …a divorce, a scandal, maybe just the noise of his own head.

At first, Etta didn’t pay him much mind. Outsiders came and went. But Cal was patient. He’d stop by with fresh coffee or offer to fix her broken fence post. He learned the rhythm of her world …when to talk, when to stay quiet, how to listen to the frogs sing after rain. Before long, they were friends in the truest sense …laughing under the stars, sharing secrets neither of them meant to.

Cal saw something in Etta …something strong and soft all at once. And soon enough, he wanted more. But Etta had learned that love could turn on you like a cornered animal. So when Cal reached for her hand one evening, she pulled away. Not harshly, but with that quiet fear that comes from knowing how deep hurt can run.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” she told him, eyes shining in the twilight.

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I’d sure like to find out.”

She thought, yeah, that’s what all the men say to me.

That quiet charm, that easy smile, that promise that he’d be different. They always said that …right before they disappeared or turned cold. Cal wasn’t any different, she told herself. But still… she liked his company.

He never pressed her. Never made her feel small. He just showed up …steady as the tide, dependable as the sunrise. Fixing what broke, mending what bent. When her fence leaned, he propped it. When her old Chevy refused to start, he got her to work himself. When the storm rolled through one August night, he stood on her porch till the thunder passed, just to be sure the roof held.

So she kept him around. That seemed fair.

She made sure he stayed fed … a pot of gumbo here, a peach cobbler there. She told herself it was the least she could do, a neighborly kindness for a man who’d done more than his share. But every time he sat at her kitchen table, boots dusty from work, eyes soft with gratitude, something in her chest fluttered … a quiet, dangerous warmth she didn’t quite trust.

Everyone in town told her she was crazy for not giving him a chance.

“Girl, if you don’t take that man before someone else does, you’re gonna regret it,” Miss Ida at the feed store would say, wagging her finger. Even Father Duval, old and sharp-eyed as a heron, mentioned that Cal seemed “good people.”

And Cal, well …he didn’t chase her. He just stayed.

He showed up at her door with bags of feed, or a new latch for the chicken coop, or wildflowers he swore he didn’t pick on purpose. He never asked for much more than her company, and that was somehow worse … because she started to want to give him everything.

Then one late autumn evening, when the bayou air turned cool and the frogs quieted down early, she decided she was tired of fighting herself.

She wore her hair loose that night …silver ribbons catching the last light of sunset … and when Cal came by, she asked, almost shy, “You hungry?”

He smiled. “Always.”

That’s how their first date started …not at some restaurant, but right there on her back porch. Two plates of catfish, a bottle of wine, and a soft tune playing on the old radio. They talked till the moon climbed high and the crickets filled the silence between their words. When he reached across the table to brush a stray curl from her cheek, she didn’t pull away this time.

From then on, they were inseparable.

He loved the way she made him laugh …that wild, reckless laugh that could startle birds right off the power lines. And she… she loved how safe she felt around him. Like maybe she didn’t have to be the strong one all the time.

He didn’t try to fix her. He just stood beside her while she figured out how to let herself be loved without losing her freedom.

They found a rhythm … quiet mornings with coffee on the porch, afternoons spent tending to the garden, long evenings by the water where he’d play his guitar and she’d hum along. The boy, Lyle, took to him too …started calling him “Cal-Man,” as if that were a superhero’s name. And for a while, it really did feel like peace had finally come to the LeBlanc place.

But peace is a fragile thing in the bayou.

Storms always come.

✨to be continued✨