Written by J. Mitchell Brown
Photography by Donna Huffman

y mother is an addict. There. I’ve said it. It needed to be said. She has a problem. And my father, my sister and I have warned her repeatedly about this problem. We keep reminding her, “Mom, the only way you can address your problem is if you admit that you have one.” (Though, I don’t know how much credence my sister lends to this line of thought; she suffers from the same affliction.) I worry for my mother, but sometimes, you just have to let parents make their own mistakes. They grow up so darn fast ‘sniff’.

I was in Columbia the other day visiting with my parents. It was time for me to leave and my mind was locked on seeing if I could beat my all time best record of 2 hours and 1 minute from my mother’s front door to my front door. Before I left, Mom stopped me in the kitchen and said, “Here. Take some of these to Laurie. See if she wants to use them.”

“Mom, no, I can’t,” I began.

“Yes, you can. I don’t need all of these.”

“I know, Mom. We’ve been saying that for years,” I said.

I grew misty eyed thinking of the struggles my mother must go through to control the beast that rules her life.

“Then take them,” she demanded. “Get them out of here.”

“Mom, I can’t. I don’t...”

“You don’t what?”

“I...I don...ugh...I don’t want Laurie to develop the same problems you have.” There. The Truth. I couldn’t take that back now.

“What are you talking about?” Mom asked. “I don’t have a problem.” She truly believed that she didn’t have a problem. It broke my heart to see her like this.

“Mother,” I began softly, “it’s OK. These things happen. But we just need to get control of it.”

I suddenly realized it was better that my sister was not here. Not only would it break her to see her brother man-handling her mother, but she may get upset realizing she’s as much at fault as anyone for the feeble state our mother was in.

“Mitch, I’m only going to ask you this once,” Mom said, calculating her words carefully. “What in green blazes are you talking about?”

“Mama. Oh, Mama,” I said, with tears welling up in my eyes. “I am so sorry to have to be the one...” It was killing me. “But – Mom...” I straightened myself up and regained composure. “you’re addicted to magazines.”

Mom stood there for a second, blinking dumbly as she looked around the kitchen, probably looking for an escape route to flee from this terribly uncomfortable situation. She looked back at me, genuine concern in her eyes.

“Mitch,” she began.

I walked towards her with my arms outstretched. “Yes, Mama?”

“Drive careful going home.” And with that she shoved a stack of magazines into my outstretched arms.

It truly is ridiculous how many magazines my mom gets: Cottage Living, Coastal Living, Southern Living, just plain old Living. Garden Delights, Garden and Home, Home and Garden, and, you guessed it, just plain old Garden. There’s Oxford American, Self, Oprah, The Bluffton Breeze, and Jimmy Cracked Corn and I Don’t Care. It is insane. And that doesn’t even begin to consider all the mail order catalogues that she gets. I’m not even going to waste press space telling you about all of them. Suffice it to say that there has been more than one time that Mom has needed to carry a box with her to the mailbox to haul all that stuff back inside. And then, to boot, she gets duplicates of most of these publications over at the farm!

I don’t really know when she finds time to read all of them, but at some point she must. She is forever cutting out small articles and pictures of ideas that my sister and I can incorporate into our lives some way, whether it be a barn-door sized screen door for my work shop or a nifty way to organize things in a cramped closet. To understand how amazing it is that she finds time to read these magazines, let alone clip something out, address an envelope and mail it, you need to know how my mom operates: from the time she gets out of bed in the morning to the time she falls back into it at night, she’s like a hummingbird: non-stop. The only time I see her idle is at nighttime when she has her glass of wine and watches a few minutes of TV. It’s crazy.

But, she did tell me about a new publication recently, to which I promptly subscribed. To know me, I only subscribe to a couple of magazines: Shallow Water Angler, Oxford American, and of course, The Bluffton Breeze. These three just about cover all of my hobbies: fishing, writing, and local events. I don’t subscribe to a gardening magazine on account of I just read Mom’s when she’s done with them (hey, saves me a couple of bucks, at least!)

As it is, I never have been able to decide which side of the fence I stand on identity wise. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m as comfortable in my skin as a pair of fur lined bedroom slippers, but I do (like a lot of other things in my life) take it to the extreme. On one side, I do love the Old South ways of polite company with “yes ma’am’s” and “no sirs” when gentlemen wore sports coats and oxfords to even the most mundane events. On the other side, I certainly do like my country boy heritage and my big old camouflage truck with my black Lab riding shotgun with me. I love to dig in the dirt and plant things and get so dirty that water turns from crystal clear to mud in its six foot journey from the shower head, over my body, to the drain.

This new magazine, promises the best of both worlds, even though it is decidedly marketed towards the sophisticate more so than the farm hand. But nonetheless, I am eager to receive my first issue of Garden & Gun. And since I can’t say it better than the publishers of that magazine can, let me steal a piece from their website...this is really what sold me on it: “It reflects the lives of modern Southern men and women and inspires us to enjoy the fruits of the land while preserving the natural resources for the future.” Well, you can’t get much more in line with what I’m looking for in (another) magazine than that!

The publishing world is a funny one, or at least it seems that way from the outside. I never would’ve thought that anything as opposite in nature as a garden and a gun would ever find themselves sharing the pages of a magazine. I mean, why not a magazine called Fruits and Airplanes, or Copper Mining & Origami? Though, when I started studying on Garden & Gun I learned that there used to be a club for the elites of Charleston named exactly that: Garden & Gun. It was a place where folks who shared a love for the South, it’s perks and beauty, could gather. Sounds like a little piece of heaven to me.

So Mom’s still in denial. I didn’t save the day after all. But I can be thankful, even if just a smidgen, for her magazine addiction, for without it, how would I have ever learned about the latest addition to my growing subscription list.

I swear I’ll keep mine in check, though.