To get that Tupelo honey, somebody’s gotta haul the hives to the groves

Have you ever heard the song “Tupelo Honey” by Van Morrison? The chorus is, “She’s as sweet as Tupelo honey, she’s an angel of the first degree.”

Every time this song comes on, my husband looks at me with his impish grin and says, “He must have written this about you,” and then proceeds to laugh himself silly. Now I’m the first one to admit that warm-fuzzy is not high on my list of attributes, but the constant reminder that I may be a little tougher then the average person can give a girl a complex.

I thought about this as I was stacking two cords of firewood in sub-freezing weather this week and the song came on one of my Pandora stations. I was kind of happy that my mocking spouse wasn’t around to laugh at the glaring paradox.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m quite comfortable in the role I have defined in life. And even though my dearest friend calls me the meanest woman she has ever met, she says it with love. Because when I threaten to take away Christmas if my kids don’t keep their rooms clean, I’m just trying to prepare them for a life of cleanliness and good hygiene. I like to think of it as firm, but fair.

And let’s be honest here, as my husband likes to remind me when I shake my head while he carries around a very large, very confused dog, pretending to talk for it like a puppet, I married him. And he, in turn, married me. I was never the giggly girl that doted on him and hung on his every word. Instead, we spent the beginning of our friendship heckling one another.

In the very early days, we tended bar together and usually, I was the last bartender standing. A little further into the relationship, his life was so consumed with fishing, I learned to fish in order to spend time with him. He still speaks fondly about how I stood next to him, rod in hand, in the middle of the Long Island Sound, one frigid December morning before dawn, hauling up blackfish.

A delicate flower I am not. But a wife that has stood on deck cutting up squid in 13-foot seas off of Montauk point? Yep, that’s me. You have to take the good with the bad.

I’m not sure at what point in my life I started to become who I am today, but I know that I was always a tomboy. You could find me playing stickball and soccer, collecting ants and earthworms and on a few occasions, tasting a mud pie. As a side note, I don’t recommend that one. No amount of lemon sorbet is going to effectively cleanse ones palate after eating wet dirt.

In my world, you earned your stripes by not crying when you fell off your bike and won contests by having the first skinned knee of the summer. Whoever spit the farthest chose first for kickball and you lived in awe of that kid who could burp the alphabet. (My cousin was the world champ.)

Listen, there was a reason my mother used to recite, “There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid,” as she shuffled me away from whatever disaster I had created.

Fast forward a few years and here we are. The dear friend that calls me mean also addresses me as Sarah Connor (check out the Terminator if you’re unsure of the reference.) I’m the go-to girl for replacing the bottle at the water cooler. I don’t easily cry (unless it’s about an abused or neglected dog – hey, I’m not heartless.) I have no patience for drama and those who surround themselves with it. I loathe weakness in myself and have little patience for it in others. It makes me, admittedly, a little harsh.

Okay, so I see why Brian likes to laugh at the Tupelo honey thing, but really, I’m not all cold and mommy-dearest like. I totally allow wire hangers in my house (on a short term basis.) I am also the most loyal friend one could have, a devoted and diligent daughter, a dedicated employee and, to hear my family tell it, I’m not so bad as a wife and mother. Even if my son once told me that I’m the scariest person on earth, he prefaced it with, “You know we love you, but…”

So maybe Van Morrison wasn’t thinking about me when he penned his famous ballad, but that’s ok. I’m more of a 90s chick-power-anthem fan anyway. I’m totally with Lilith Fair performer, Meredith Brooks and her one hit that is still one of my favorites, “I’m a bi*ch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother, I’m a sinner, I’m a saint, I do not feel ashamed. I’m your hell, I’m your dream, I’m nothing in between,” and to all who know me, “You know you wouldn’t want it any other way.”

After five and a half hours of stacking wood, I was really cold and sore and extra sad that my dog had chewed up my heating pad a few weeks ago. Luckily, I have an all-natural backup that’s full of flax seeds and heats up in just a few minutes in the microwave. If you don’t have one of these gems around, you can make your own with almost no sewing skills at all.

Home-made heating pad

Ingredients:
Pillow case
Flaxseeds or rice
Essential oil of choice (optional- about 10 drops)
Funnel

Directions:
Turn the pillow case inside-out and then sew it closed, leaving a small corner open (about an inch). Make sure it’s a tight stitch so the seeds don’t come out. Then turn the bag right side out. Mix together the flax (or rice) and essential oil. Put the funnel in the corner that you left open. Pour flax in, using enough to make it full, but with room to move a bit. Sew up the final corner. Microwave for 30 seconds at a time, until you reach the desired heat. One or two minutes should be plenty.

If you too, aren’t sure why one would purchase an eye lash curler, particularly since it looks like some device of medieval torture, lament with me at laurie@riverheadlocal.com.

Top photo caption: Honeybee on the short-lived Nyssa sylvatica flower of the Tupelo tree, which grows in northwest Florida and Georgia.  The trees only blossom for three to four weeks, so beekeepers haul their hives right into the thick of the groves to get the best honey.  See: What’s so special about Tupelo honey? on TheKitchn.com.