Brandon heaved the massive bottom portion of the now famous amber-colored Christmas tree over his shoulder and came staggering quickly down the stairs, trying to make it down without dropping it.

A woman, over the course of her life, will learn whom she can shop with and whom she can’t.

There are friends who will tell you that everything looks good on you, when it doesn’t. There are other friends who will tell that nothing looks good on you, when it does. There are friends who will want to shop in places too pricey for your pocketbook. There are other friends who will want to shop in places too cheap for your pocketbook. Choosing shopping buddies is one of the more important tasks in a woman’s life.

Now that Mama’s gone, it seems pertinent that someone step up and take her place. Or try to, anyway. Regarding the kind of life that Mama had, I think I’d like to step up and volunteer to turn into Mama. Now, that woman had it made.

As though it was just yesterday, not the too-many-years-to-count that it really was, I can hear my daddy clearly. He’d pull back his shoulders, raise an eyebrow and point his finger at me – always with great meaning – and say, “Little girl, I’m about to learn you a thing or two.”

For many years now, Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday. It has always been a day of joyful gathering of family at my house, accented with favorite foods, merry fellowship and a time to reflect on our blessings. I have always looked forward to Thanksgiving.

Karen is always full of advice. Even that which I don’t desire or necessarily need. Like the other day.

“I have a good piece of advice for you,” she began in one of our daily conversations that includes vital information like how many pieces of fried chicken Dixie Dew ate at Mama’s or how her kids are not practicing piano. She called me up, I answered the phone and it all began with those words.

A while back, Mama, Louise, Rodney and I visited with some good friends of ours up in the mountains.

Their standard of living is simpler than you’re liable to find in places far south of their mountains, and that river that ambles lazily through the couple of hundred acres that is home to a family compound of sorts. That means that as the kids grew up, they didn’t move away. They simply walked across the hill, the holler, the river or the pasture and set up housekeeping. Some are within hollering distance while a couple can be back at the family homestead in less than two minutes.

It has taken me all the years – proving that you can always learn important new things – to realize how sensitive men can be.

There is an art to making fried green tomatoes. Unfortunately, too many restaurant cooks are artless. They think they can when they can’t.

Not too long ago, I met a nice guy, a renewing of an old friendship actually, and I tried to fall in love with him. I tried, but I couldn’t.

When I heard there was going to be an auction of “Gone With The Wind” memorabilia, there was no doubt that I was going. Too, I knew just the person to join me in the caper.

To New York City, once I went to do a photo shoot for the cover of a book.

It was less than a week after the 9/11 attacks, the original shoot date having been scheduled for Sept. 12, then postponed for reasons now too well known to all mankind.

Being a child of the seventies, television has a powerful influence on me. It can even test the core of my Southern woman being as it did recently.

An email arrived one day from a dear, old friend who was once my boss when he was managing editor of a daily newspaper where I worked during college and which was later my first full-time job.

From my hotel room in Knoxville once, I phoned in to check on the girls: Mama and Dixie Dew.

The first answered the phone, a bit weak in voice, and reported that her cough and congestion were noticeably better but she was still weak in body. Again, I reminded her that when recovering from the flu, it is imperative to work at regaining strength.

Too often I used to stop by Mama’s and find her with that look in her eye. I’d know it the moment I walked in, so I silently curse myself for picking that time to drop by.

Several years ago, an obituary in the Atlanta paper caught my eye and I clipped it out. I ran across it recently and, again as then, I found myself fascinated by how it summed up the man that died and what that summation says about our society.

You may recall past columns where I wrote of my friend, Stevie, who rescues distressed possums, and then influenced me to do the same when I found an injured possum on my front porch.

It may seem surprising to you — for it is to me — that I, the undeniable embodiment of all things Southern, should become so fascinated by a Yankee.

Right then and there in the Los Angeles International Airport, I thought I was going to have to pitch a conniption fit. That, to explain a conniption fit properly, is when a woman of Southern origin creates a scene of dramatic wailing and gnashing of teeth.

As life stretches on, it is always a blessing to share a history with those who know you well. It is a bond that cannot be fabricated for it is created by the times and stories you mutually share over many years.

The subject of homecoming queens started in the odd way that some topics enter into a conversation. It really had nothing to do with what we were discussing but then, in a very real way, it did.

I’d always heard that love – or rather the loss of it – could drive a woman crazy. Push her plum to the edge and sometimes even push her over it until she was in a free fall that landed her slap-dab in the middle of crazy.

A friend emailed to remind me of something I had long forgotten.

“I still owe you a theater date,” he wrote, referring to that time in New York City when business had delayed him and he had flown in too late for the Broadway play.

To be quite frank, I don’t remember from where the idea arose. It could have been at the suggestion of one of two friends or – and this is quite possible – it was my own bright idea.

Sophie Rose was not, in the assessment of other women, what you would call “pretty.”

She was not even, as Southern women are fond of saying when the words “pretty” or “beautiful” simply cannot be used, attractive.

It is not certain how we got on the subject, but somehow a friend mentioned that when he dies, he wants “What A Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong to be played at his funeral.

Once when I was young and love had broken my heart for the first time, I thought I would never recover from the agony resulting when the bliss had been sucker-punched and sent packing.

It would behoove all you men to thoroughly understand one thing: we women normally conduct our romances by committee.

A friend and I were just talking about this. Talking about how so many people want to write a book.