The First Camellia Blossom

Jimmy's father, James Lovett Dewar, Senior, was a serious-minded man with one hobby: he loved gardening. He always had a vegetable garden, and the tomatoes he produced were legendary, but his real passion was for his camellias. He was fascinated by all the different varieties, and he enjoyed rooting them from cuttings, and grafting new specimens to existing bushes. Many of his camellias date back to the forties and the fifties.

The house where Jimmy grew up, and where Mr. Dewar tended his camellias, was recently moved, so that the large lot it was on could be used for an apartment complex expansion. This all happened at the same time we were landscaping our yard, and Jimmy decided that if there was any way to do it, he wanted to try to save some of his father's camellia bushes, and have them moved to our house.

Son-in-law Patrick, who can do anything, borrowed a monster machine from Gary Minchew, that can scoop up very large plants and their whole root systems without injuring them. Even so, the survival statistics for transplanting such old large camellias is not good. But we did it, hoping for the best, and thinking that if we got just two or three out of the ten we moved to live, we'd be happy.

They were moved in the heat of the summer, when the drought was at its worst, and Jimmy and I have been holding our breath that they'd make it. Today, nine look very healthy, and one is struggling, but we haven't given up on it. They all have buds on them, and we've been waiting excitedly to see what the flowers will look like. Jimmy has said over and over that he wished just ONE bloom would open before we go back to Atlanta for his transplant. Every day he goes out to check.

When we got back from Atlanta late this afternoon, we made a beeline for the backyard , and there on the top of one of Mr. Dewar's prized camellia bushes, we found one gloriously perfect pink blossom.

Where IS everybody?

Houston's at noon on Saturday: no people

Peachtree at Piedmont : no cars

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Lunchtime traffic on Saturday: nonexistent

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When we got to Atlanta Thursday, it was like entering a ghost town. Nobody was there. Streets usually in gridlock traffic were empty, normally bustling restaurants felt abandoned, and we saw very few people Friday at the Emory cancer clinic. It was positively Twilight Zone-ish.

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Jimmy went through a full battery of tests, from ten o'clock Friday morning until after five that afternoon, and by the time we had finished, he was dead tired, and his back really hurt. Everything looks good though: except for having cancer, Jimmy's in perfect health.

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We're on track to start this program in earnest next Friday, so we came back to Valdosta today. And NOW we know why there's nobody in Atlanta: they are all on I-75, in the southbound lane. It was bumper to bumper, stop and go, all the way to the Vienna exit, where we finally gave up, and drove the rest of the way on US41.

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While still on the interstate, we counted cars from Ontario, which we quickly tired of. We also did quite a good job of singing along with the 50's and 60's stations on satellite radio. One of Jimmy's better efforts was a duet he did with Sam Cooke, singing "What A Wonderful World It Would Be". "Only the Lonely" was very nice, too. Jimmy did the Roy Orbison part with that one, and I got to do all the "dum dum dum dum dee doo wah"s. Later, by the time I had gotten half way through singing "Land of 1000 Dances" with Wilson Pickett, Jimmy had had all he could stand, and turned the radio off.

Ho Ho Ho!

Christmas this year turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable. So many past Christmases have been too frantic and too exhausting, and this year it just pleasantly and simply unfolded. Jimmy and I agreed that it was one of the best since our children were small.

My brother Mac and sister-in-law Susan, whose generosity and boundless energy never fail to amaze, had fifteen of us for Christmas day dinner. They had included a longtime family friend, Leona Strickland Hudson, who had grown up with our parents, and her being there added a lot to the day. At the other end of the age spectrum, almost-four-year-old Howell regaled us with a flawless rendition of "The Twelve Days of Christmas", and baby sister Berkley sang us her unique but adorable toddler version of "Jingle Bells".

Then there were our grandchildren, William and Jake: they were completely and utterly delightful. Jimmy and I surprised them Christmas eve with a swing set in our backyard; they had a ball, and we had even more fun watching them. After the grown-ups had gone inside, William and I went down the slide umpteen zillion times, and when he showed me how he could do a somersault, I showed him how I could do a cartwheel. Needless to say, I could hardly get out of bed the next morning, and have been eating Advil like candy.

A Very Merry Christmas

This is the extent of our decorations: a fresh wreath on the door by Jimmy's chair (INSIDE the house), and a Christmas amaryllis our sweet neighbors Dick and Lori Campbell gave us.

Thinking that we would be back in Atlanta for Christmas, Jimmy and I decided to keep things very low-key this year: no decorations, small gifts for the babies and his mother, and hugs, kisses, and checks for the rest of the children. We agreed not to get anything for each other this year: the only things we want, money can't buy.

We have declined almost all evening festivities, as Jimmy has not felt much like going out at night. Our total focus has been to do everything we can to get Jimmy in the best possible condition for the transplant. We feel like Rocky Balboa, training for the big fight.

A great source of joy for us has been receiving all the great Christmas cards and letters and emails and phone calls and food and gifts. They have boosted our spirits tremendously, and we are deeply grateful for all of them. Please continue to stay in touch with us, and to keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We love you. Merry Christmas! Ellen & Jimmy

Update

For the last two or three days, Jimmy has been more "Jimmy-ish" than he's been in ages: he's more interested in what's going on around him, he's feistier, and tiny rare glimpses of his old joie de vivre have been spotted from time to time. He just FEELS better. All of that chemotherapy he's been taking beats him up something awful, and as he says, the Quality of Life on chemo is not good.

Now for the downside of feeling good: Jimmy knows he's doing well because he's been off the chemo for several weeks, and without the chemo, the Pacmen ( Jimmy's little euphemism for the cancer) are at it again. His paraprotein counts are going up. So we can't really enjoy this brief respite of normalcy.

We're going to Atlanta December 27 to start doing tests (EKG, ECHO, labs, pulmonary function, etc., etc.) to make sure Jimmy is in good enough health to survive the transplant - which he is. Consents are scheduled for January 2, and injections are started on the 4th, and collection on the 8th. Depending on how all of this goes, the transplant will probably happen soon after...IF we get enough stem cells to do the transplant - and we will.

FINALLY things are happening

For months now, we've sounded like parrots, repeating the same phrase, "waiting for the new drug," over and over and over, as time and again we've gone from hope to disappointment, until we have become completely emotionally exhausted. We have FINALLY been notified that AMD3100 has just been approved for Jimmy to use. This is wonderful news, although we can sympathize with poor Charlie Brown, waiting for his nemesis Lucy to jerk the football out from under him one more time.

To clarify the situation: the only way we can put Jimmy's cancer into remission is for him to undergo a stem cell transplant. The stem cells needed for the transplant are collected from Jimmy's blood, and in the previous collection attempt, Jimmy's body was not producing enough. BIG problem. It has been recently discovered that a substance called AMD3100 causes the body to rapidly produce abundant stem cells, but it has not yet been approved by the FDA. Another big problem.

We applied for an exception for its use in Jimmy's case several months ago, and in the meantime, have been using chemotherapy to control the cancer, while attempting to cut through all of the bureaucratic red tape. Which we have now done. FINALLY. We HOPE.

HOORAY!!!! This is a huge step in the right direction.

The lost art of letter writing

Also in Mama's attic were boxes of papers, primarily old letters and newspaper clippings. The temptation to just throw them away and be done with it was overcome by curiosity, so I lugged them all out to the car, and carried them home for further investigation. I'm glad that I did.

My grandfather, Berkley Mackey, died in 1922, when Daddy was six years old, and I never had a sense of him, of who he was, of what he was like. In one of the boxes, I found a packet of letters written by him, most of them to one of his brothers, and several to my grandmother, from 1917 up to a few weeks before his death.

He had a jewelry store in downtown Valdosta, 131 North Patterson Street; I believe that's a little north of where the Bleu Cafe is now, and where the old McCrory's used to be. The letterhead on his stationery says, "Mackey Jewelry Company, Jewelers and Opticians," which is an interesting sales concept. It sounds a little like an old barber shop/dental parlor establishment, an incongruous sort of one-stop shopping where you can get your hair cut and a tooth pulled at the same time.

His small formal script is difficult to decipher, and at first you feel as though you've come into the middle of a conversation, or are overhearing strangers talking at the next table in a restaurant. Nothing profound is said: it's the humdrum of daily events, and the minutiae of ordinary life, but as you read on, you're irresistibly pulled in, and you begin to feel what he feels, and to see his world through his eyes, as his words paint a portrait of the man that he was.

In some of his last letters to his brother, he talked about how hard the influenza epidemic was hitting Valdosta that year. It was also the Christmas season, and the jewelry business was booming; he would sometimes go in at 4:30 in the morning, and often not get home until midnight. He got the flu, and after going back to work too soon, had a relapse. There were no antibiotics then, and he contracted pneumonia and died, two weeks before Christmas, leaving behind his young wife and his two small children. He was thirty-six years old.

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[Note: The ring Maxwell gave to Elizabeth earlier this month is the same ring Grandfather Mackey gave to my grandmother in 1913. She wore it until 1947, when she gave it to Daddy to give to my mother. Mama wore it until 2006, and the first time I saw it when it was not on her finger was when I removed it after she died.]

Toys in the Attic

There's a box in Mama's attic that's full of my old dolls, ruined but much-loved relics from many long ago Christmases. They were in a sorry state some fifty years ago, when they were unceremoniously dumped into a box and hauled up the rickety disappearing stairs; I'm sure Mama's moving them there was only a way to postpone the inevitable, which was to throw them away. It's the old Scarlett O'Hara "I'll think about it tomorrow" mindset: when you can't make up your mind about whether or not to dispose of something, just put it in the attic, and that way, decisions can be deferred for years, decades, maybe even centuries.

Pat, the baby doll I got when I was two, has a cloth body and molded head, hands, and feet. We went everywhere together, until the next Christmas, when Patty Cake, the bride doll, came along and gave Pat some serious competition for my affections.

There was a Tiny Tears doll for Christmas one year, and the new version Tiny Tears the next; I cleverly named them "Tiny" and "Teeny". They were fed with a baby bottle filled with water, and they wet their diapers and cried real tears from all the appropriate places. Tiny fell into disfavor after I put milk in her bottle instead of water; she smelled sour from then on.

There's the Betsy McCall doll named Betsy and the Barbi doll named Barbi and another doll that I strangely named Tootles. None of my dolls were shelf-sitters; they all played first-string for a lot of years.

I think that I'll go back to Mama's attic with a nice new box, and I'll pack up Pat and Patty Cake and Tiny and Teeny and Betsy and Barbi and Tootles, and put them all in MY attic. Then I'll decide what to do with them tomorrow.

Tish and Livia: Our Angels

The Dewar Properties Christmas party was tonight: fun and festive, and the crowd of seventy-five or eighty seemed to really enjoy it. Many of the employees have worked there for a long time, and the atmosphere is more like that of a family than a business. Smart and capable, they appear to genuinely care about each other and their work, which probably explains why they function so successfully as a team.

Tish Johnson is Jimmy's longtime business partner, and CEO of Dewar Properties; she is also one of his best friends in the world and his surrogate sister. She is a remarkable person, a real-life Wonder Woman; the longer you know her, the more you begin to appreciate all that she is: brilliant businesswoman, devoted wife, loving and involved mother and grandmother, loyal and caring friend. All of this, and she looks like the perfect Southern belle.


Livia Tatum is Jimmy's personal assistant, and has worked for him and kept his life running smoothly for twenty-plus years. She is an indispensable source of knowledge and a miraculous solver of problems. Everyone in the office has long been accustomed to Jimmy's frequent bellowing, "LIVIA!!"

We are almost nine months now into this medical ordeal, and we owe a lot to a great many people. But I truly don't know what we would have done - either of us - without Tish and Livia.

406 Terrace Blvd, Part 2

My brother William and I went over to Mama's a few weeks ago to survey the situation. I haven't been over there much since Jimmy's been sick: for one thing, it makes me so sad, and also, nine times out of ten, I set the burglar alarm off. The keypads stick badly, and seconds later, sirens are screaming and bells are clanging and that recorded male voice is blaring all over the neighborhood: "WARNING! WARNING! A RESTRICTED AREA HAS BEEN VIOLATED! THE POLICE HAVE BEEN CALLED! LEAVE IMMEDIATELY!! It's enough to give you a heart attack.

In spite of all my apprehensions, William and I had a good time, laughing and talking and sharing our memories. We inspected cabinets and closets, went all through the attic, and walked around the yard for a while. I said something about the long gone tree house, and William told me, "You know that's where the neighborhood stash of Playboy magazines was kept." I was surprised; I thought I knew most of their little secrets.

William went on to tell me about one afternoon when he had gotten home from junior high school. A bad storm had passed through that morning, and he had been dismayed to come home to find leaves and tree limbs and naked ladies scattered all over the backyard.

Saturday, 3AM

Jimmy's asleep, and I'm not, so I'm amusing myself by downloading photographs I like. These first ones are of Barry, a Bahamian guide who helps us get lobster on the first day of lobster season, August 1. We, to paraphrase Bubba Gump, had steamed lobster, boiled lobster, lobster salad, lobster chowder, lobster omelets, lobster dip, lobster wraps, and fried lobster, until we were SICK of lobster.

The building below is what I looked at from our window, that month last June that we spent at the Ritz. I loved looking at this building, and it's a good thing, since there wasn't much else to look at. The long horn cow belongs to one of our neighbors at Yustega.






Sweet baby Jake

Suenelle Scruggs and her new baby, Honey

Patrick and my darling William. I do adore this child

I was having so much fun Thanksgiving I forgot to take pictures, and missed some great photo ops. Please notice Jimmy in the orange cap: poor thing couldn't take it off all day long, because he was hiding his bald head from his Mama.

Rosey







Jimmy's beautiful mother

Elizabeth's sister-in-law Nicole Steel and Nicole's daughter Gwyneth

Jimmy and his buddy













Jake and his motorcycle

Kenny, George, and Jimmy

Speak no evil, Hear no evil, See no evil

Jackie's Birthday

The birthday boy and his lovely lady

Maxwell and Elizabeth

Merritt Giles and his date Laura, Max and Elizabeth, Susannah Dover and her fiance, Justin Martin

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Today was was Jackie's thirty-second birthday, and he and Mary and Max and Elizabeth came over for dinner. Max, who is a gourmet chef, did most of the cooking.

After dinner, Max and Elizabeth changed clothes and went to the SAE dance at the country club. Some of their friends stopped by on their way to the dance, and it was one attractive group of young people.