Plains Truth Journal

True Love's Heart

2011-02-14T05:45:00.013-06:00

For Valentine's Day, a story I wrote years ago.

He never could see why she'd married him. He hadn't had much to offer when they met. He'd been nothing, but a horse groomer, a cattle groomer he told her. He spent years roaming from town to town, ranch to ranch, grooming cattle for wealthy people to put in shows to win blue ribbons. That's what he told her at least. Truth was he was more of a drunk. Roaming from town to town was true, and true he did comb a few tangles out of the coats of the polled Herefords, but basically he roamed from drink to drink, from waking up on one stable floor to another, never noticing the day or the hour. It didn't make any difference.

Then he met her, and things changed. Her love filled up all the empty places. He became a sober man. And, as if to somehow repay her for replacing his futile, stumbling, existence with the key to her heart, he brought her gifts every Valentine day.

My first recollection of Valentine’s Day was when I was about five years old. I always sat at the front window of our green stucco bungalow peering through the lace curtains waiting for the blue sedan which deposited him at the curb every afternoon. On this particular day, the guys in the car pool were more than their usual rowdy selves. They rolled down the car windows in spite of the drizzly February day and yelled out after him as he made his way up the stairs with both arms behind his back.

"Papa, Papa," I cried, running to meet him. But for once he didn't drop his lunch bucket to pick me up. Instead he walked down the hall past the bedrooms and through the dining room, looking for my mother, the velveteen box hidden behind the back of his greasy overalls.

He found her in the kitchen, where, putting his arm around her, he shyly handed her the box. "I love you, Mommy," he said, a forty-one year old little boy.

"Oh, you shouldn't have,” were her first, and as I was to learn through the years, customary words.

I was excluded, for the first time I sensed that. While I would never feel unloved, this love, this day never stretched to include me or my brothers.

That was to be only one reminder of many over the years. Every Valentines day, I knew without fail, that regardless of what our fortunes were that year, there would be some kind of gift on Valentines Day. It might be she didn't have but one new dress throughout the whole year, and when fortunes were really bad, the only clothes she had were those she made herself out of feed sacks, but regardless of what it took, come Valentines Day, there would be his heart and the heart shaped box of candy.

I remember every different one he gave her. In the years when things were really tight, it would be a plain paper box, red with a ribbon around it. And in the years when things were going a little better, it might be a velvet heart, or a satin heart with satin roses on it. One year he gave her a lilac heart with lilac roses on it. It was always my favorite, but then, I was never much one for taste. It didn't matter what they looked like, her heart was taken in them all.

What brought to mind all these past Valentine's days was a mid-morning call from my father. "Cate," he asked, "Would you go see your mother? It's Valentines Day, you know. Could you go buy a heart to take to her at the home? You know I just can't get out. My knees are a little too weak. But it hurts me to think of her being there and not having a box of chocolates on Valentines Day. Just sign it "I love you.""

"Oh, Papa," I started to cry.

"I know,” He tried to cheer me up. "I know it's hard to see her like she is, but even if she doesn't know anything, she still might think I'd forgotten her on Valentines Day, that she isn't my sweetheart anymore. You'll go won't you?"

"I'll go, Papa,” I replied, "I'll go."

Reassured, he gave me further instructions before he hung up the phone. “You know she still loves her chocolates. Make sure it's a Russell Stover heart. That's her favorite kind."

"I will.” I promised.

"Thank you, Cate,” I could hear a tremor in his voice as he hung up the phone, "Thank you."

I put my coat on, walk out of the office and down the street, wondering if I am worthy to be the bearer of his love to my mother. I wonder for myself, what my own marriage would have been like if Charlie had brought me boxes of chocolates during the years when I was unable to see any more love in his eyes than I did, when we had grown so far apart. Can something so simple as a paper box hold something together that is no longer there? What about all these small tokens of love that my father brings my mother, are they the real thing? Charlie gave me so many more things than my father ever gave my mother, yet, in the end it was never enough.

Later in the afternoon, after I’ve once more become absorbed in my work, I look out my office door just in time to see the florist bring flowers to one of the girls that works here. For a minute, a swift second in time, a minute of home strikes me, but then I realize there isn't any one in my life who would be sending me flowers. Certainly not Charlie, that was dead a long time ago. But it is Valentines Day and it brings back memories of better times, memories of my father, and his Valentine Days. I’ve witnessed what it is to be loved and adored. Somehow that erases the emptiness of having never really been loved, for just myself, and replaces it with hope instead.

Silent Night

2010-12-09T09:55:00.000-06:00

I wrote the following years ago as part of a fiction writing group in New Jersey. It seem appropriate to the season.

It was one of those frustrating, last days before Christmas. I wore the wrong shoes to the mall and my feet hurt so badly that I picked up the first thing I saw in the kid’s sizes, not caring if it matched or not. Concentrating on not limping, I was unaware that the ranks of shoppers had dwindled down to an unseasonal few and so was quite surprised when I walked out the door to see that the earlier dusting of snow had been replaced by at least six inches of the white stuff. The parking lot was deserted, so I slogged to my car wishing for once that we didn’t live so far off the beaten path.

Apparently, everyone else was safe at home because the road was practically deserted, peacefully so. Clutching the steering wheel tight and driving slower than usual, I made it home, tense, but safely. The dark house confirmed the suspicion, aroused by the lack of bus tracks down our seldom traveled street, that the children, although they would be highly insulted if I referred to them that way...they were fourteen and seventeen after all, weren’t home from school yet either.

Dropping my packages just inside the front door, I immediately called their school...no answer. Just as I was looking up the number for the bus company, I heard the stomping of feet on the porch and ran to open the door. They were going to be chilled through and through. Instead, when I flung the door open, I was greeted by a tall, rangy, stranger who pulled his blue stocking cap off just as I turned on the porch light. I backed into the house and quickly latched the screen, still holding the door open. Any fear for my own personal safety was quickly replaced by suspicion that he had, or at least had knowledge of the whereabouts of my children.

“What?” I asked, peering through the screen.

“I’m sorry ma’am to bother you, but you see, it’s my wife.” He pointed with the blue cap towards a battered grey car that I hadn’t noticed before, at the end of our driveway. “I think it’s her time.”

“Time?”

“ Yes’m. I don’t think we’re going to make it to her sister’s place in Silent Springs...that’s where we’re headed.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow you.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t stand here all day long explaining things with my wife out in that car about to have a baby.”

“A baby?” I asked, slightly incredulous. That someone would stop on our remote road because they were going to have a baby was too much to believe. Convinced it was a hoax, I wanted to close the door, but not before I knew if his appearance had anything to do with my children.

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you in,” I told him through the still shut screen.

“Then, would you just come with me and look at my wife?” he asked.

Thoughts tumbled through my head...they had my children and were going to take me too...”Look, I don’t know what you’re up to, and I don’t know what you’ve done with my children, but you better not harm one hair on their heads or I’ll...”

“I’m not trying to hurt your children,” he said, as my sentence trailed off “I’m only trying to get my own born”. And with that he straightened the cap on his head and retraced his footsteps back to the car.

I waited long enough to see hear the sound of his engine turn over and see smoke appear, signaling that he had started their car before I closed the door and turned inside to call the bus company since no one was answering at the school. When I finally reached them, I was told that every bus was back but the # 4 bus. “Is that the one that goes down Hook's Neck road?” I asked. “Yes, that’s the one. Apparently the radio is out because we’ve tried to reach the driver, but he doesn’t answer. I’m sure everything is ok; it’s just the weather that is slowing him down.”

I hung up and walked to the window and pulled back the curtain to see if the car had left. It was still sitting there, engine running, and lights out. There was enough light from the snow to see, but the windows were steamed over so I couldn’t make out the occupants. Deciding I would confront the man once more for an honest answer, I grabbed my coat and marched down the drive. At my insistent knock, the window rolled down. My glance skipped over the man in the blue cap to the girl in the passenger’s seat. She was no older than my own Lucy, seventeen at the most. Her face was ashen and covered with beads of sweat, yet she smiled weakly at me, and then winced as she clutched at her stomach. “Good Lord, Man.” I cried as I pulled at the driver’s door handle. “You need to get her out of here.”

“That’s what I was trying to say.” I looked at the red, faced man and saw the tears gutting his face. Why, he was not much more than a boy himself. “Here,” I cried, as I ran around to the other side of the car. “Let me help.”

Together, we helped the girl out of the car and half stumbled, half carried her to the house.

I led them to my bedroom and we helped her on to the bed. “We’ll put her in here” I put another pillow under her head, and then gathered up some more blankets. All the time, the young girl was trying to make herself comfortable and whimpering quietly.

"I’ll call 9ll." I said as I started to leave the room.

“I don’t think that’s going to do any good. This baby’s going to come too soon, and beside, we can’t afford no doctor, anyway. That’s why we were on the way to Mary’s sister’s house. She’s a midwife and she could help us out.”

However, before I even started down the hall to make the call, the girl cried out. “This is it, Joey” and the tone of her voice made it clear she was serious.

You know how it is in an emergency, a sixth sense takes over and you do what you have to do. I boiled water, gathered blankets, called the hospital for emergency instructions and watched in wonder as a most beautiful baby boy entered the world.-

In the midst of everything, the children came stumbling home. All safe and sound with tales of being stuck in a ditch and waiting at a farm house until the bus was pulled out. “We would have called, Mom”, Lucy, ever the responsible one said, “but the snow was so heavy it knocked out the farmer’s telephone. He had to take the bus driver into town to get a tow truck.”

“Yeah,” Brian, the eleven year old chimed in.” and I think Lucy liked old Tony.”

“Tony?”

“Yeah, the kid that lived where we got stuck.”

“I didn’t either, he was just nice.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s not what it looked like”

They chattered on until I told them they would have to be quiet.

“I’ve had my own excitement tonight.” I explained as I led them to the bedroom door.

I opened the door and introduced the wide jawed children to the boy who sat staring in awe at his wife and new born son.

“Did you really do that Mom?”

“Where did you learn how?”

After a minute of ooohing and aaahing over the tiny baby, I led them out of the room and closed the door so we could all tell our stories in more details over a cup of hot chocolate.

Finally, around midnight, I realized that it had stopped snowing. I slipped on my coat and walked down to the end of the driveway to put one of my old quilts in the back seat of the car in case they needed it in the morning. The furious snow had been replaced by a clear sky and a full moon that turned the silent snow to silver. A lone window shown from my house where inside my children were all safe in their beds and the girl Mary and her new baby lay sleeping. I found myself humming as I walked back to the house....”...all is calm, all is bright...”

I Hope You Dance

2010-03-09T08:40:00.003-06:00

We had a visitor at the community chorus practice last night. She was a choral professor at Julliard for years and took the time to address the choir about performing. She was heartened that, here in the rural midwest, the pursuit of classical choral singing is still alive, but she took us to task on our attitude. 'Singing is dancing,' she said. 'You have to express that flow and grace and joy while you sing. You have to be in love with what you're doing.'

I was reminded of that this morning as we read our daily C.S.Lewis. It was not what he wrote, but how he wrote that struck me. There is a flow and a grace and a joy in his writing that lets you know he really loves the subject. And those of us reading his works, experience joy in the reading as well.

There have been times in my life as well when I have felt that flow and grace. It's when I'm doing something that I love. Not necessarily something that people expect me to do, or something that is in vogue, or even something that is easy for me. But when I'm really doing something I love, sometimes I feel that joy and grace and I think others notice it as well.

Oh, and Happy 91st Birthday to my Mother. She's still baking and dancing!

End of an Era

2010-02-19T14:17:00.000-06:00

My favorite uncle, Arthur Berrier, died this week at the age of 106. I just talked to his granddaughter, Jamie, and she said he went very peacefully. A fitting end to a long steady life. Steady, that is what he was, steady, reliable, faithful, true. Attributes not much in fashion these days, but they served him well and perhaps lengthened his years. We laughed that he was like the Ever Ready bunny. He just kept going and going and going. Actually, he was probably more like the tortoise in the story of the tortoise and the hare. He was slow and steady until he finished the race. It's pretty amazing if you think about it. After his wife ,Esther, died in the mid 90's he continued to live in their apartment until just two months ago. The last year Kelly, his granddaughter-in-law, came in to help prepare his meals and make sure he ate, but other than that he took care of himself. Ironically, Kelly gave birth this week to another Berrier, as if to make up for the hole he left.

I loved Uncle Arthur and always knew that he loved me as well. I know I amused him. Up until the very end, whenever he saw me, he would smile, laugh and remind me of some story from my youth that I would just as soon forget. Like the time I missed a turn and drove my family's car into his country store. But he always was laughing with me, not at me. He was too gentle and forgiving for that.

For the past ten or so years, the celebration of his birthday has become the central family get-together. Friends and family came from all over the country and even the world to celebrate. Every year we would tell him we would see him next year at another birthday celebration, and he would shyly say that he might not make it. But he always did, and so we would gather to celebrate another year. We will be gathering once more tomorrow. To celebrate a life lived long and well, and to mourn a man who did not change the world, but made the world a better place to be by his presence.

A Good Recipe

2010-01-10T17:29:00.001-06:00

I baked a quiche today, ham and gruyere, with crust entirely from scratch, something I haven't done since the first few years we lived in New Jersey back in the late 80's. We were so poor then, that we seldom went out to eat, but we ate very well at home. Groceries were cheaper in New Jersey than they are here, and things that we can't find here, like lamb, were more plentiful. That was also before the age of the internet, Food Network and so many sources of recipes that it is almost impossible to choose. All I had then, was a couple of trusty cookbooks. But that was all I needed. It seemed like every Sunday for a year, I would practice making pie crust after Sunday Dinner. I finally figured out the secret, which fortunately I still recall. The first time I took a pie somewhere and someone said, 'that's real homemade pie crust,' I knew I had arrived. I remember the years of cooking in New Jersey with fondness. We had friends over for dinner frequently, and solved a lot of the worlds problems over those meals. Most of the meals were certainly not what I would term gourmet, but they were good and the fellowship was even better. Something was lost along the way as we became more prosperous. We were not the only ones who got caught up in fancy french restauraunts and gourmet coffee. And we are not the only ones who, now that the economy is cooling ,are finding ourselves resurrecting some of our old skills and habits, and even resurrecting some of our old cookbooks. Not the fancy ones, but the ones with the ingredient stained pages. Once the quiche was in the over, I made a pecan pie with the other half of the pie crust dough, and showed Corina how it was done. Now she knows that there are no secret ingredients. Just a little time, a few ingredients and a good recipe.

There's no such thing

2009-12-26T22:35:00.001-06:00

It's the day after Christmas and the three of us are glad to have the holiday over. It started out when we woke Christmas morning to near blizzard conditions. There are those who sing of "dreaming of a white Christmas", but the truth of the matter is a different thing. The weather conditions by themselves made for challenging holidays for most of the people in the plains, but our Christmas was of the Garrison Keillor kind...straight from the shores of Lake Wobegon. My husband started shoveling out, coming back in every twenty minutes to warm up. His cheeks were so rosy he looked like Santa Claus. I thought it was going to be a merry day, so I started preparing our Christmas dinner, thinking about "Julie and Julia" the movie which we watched the night before. I was thinking how much I resembled Julia Child, not because of my cooking, but my propensity to make such a mess that I have to mop the floor after preparing for any major meal before the guests arrive. In the middle of the stewed tomatoes, the phone rang. It was my 90 year old mother from next door, hysterically crying..."Felix is dead", she wailed. "What?" I asked. Felix is her ten year old cat who has always been the picture of health. "I went down in the basement and he was just lying next to the washing machine. I don't know what to do." That was the beginning of Christmas day. She's sobbing because we can't bury him in the back yard...obviously not because there is over a foot of snow on the ground which is frozen solid because the temperatures are hovering around five degrees. So I yelled at my husband to stop shoveling because Felix was dead. That woke Corina who came running down stairs to see what was going on. Anyway, Phil went over to mom's and did the only thing possible with a dead cat on Christmas day...he put him in a double trash bag and put him in the trash where his frozen corpse remains,waiting for the trash man who comes on Monday. That crisis averted, Phil kept shoveling and I put in a load of towels because we kept having to mop up all of the snow we were tracking in. The next thing we know, the washer is overflowing because the drain from the washer has frozen. Fortunately, I was doing a load on the hot setting and after only dumping a couple of gallons on the floor, it began to drain. And on it went...My brother managed to make the 100 mile trek down from the city, only because he is a truck driver and they are used to any conditions. My mother insisted on coming over to our house even though she has to use a walker to get around and they don't work very well in ice and snow. Her care worker last week had a cold and passed it on to her, as if a 90 year old woman with a failing heart would be immune to any germs. She comes over without even her face being covered, but she's stubborn like that. While we were exchanging presents and there was none for my brother, I ran upstairs and found I had forgotten to wrap his. I wish I could say it ended there, but later that night, just before I went to bed, the toilet upstairs stopped up. I had to wake my sleeping husband, and after searching all over the house, we finally determined that the plunger was next door at mothers, and it was definitely too late to wake her up so we could only hope that no one would wake up during the night and use the bathroom without thinking..
This morning the toilet was still full to the brim, but with some work once we got the plunger, it is now it's normal self. We had more snow during the night, but nothing that could not be handled. We took mother to the emergency room and it seems her cold has turned into bronchitis, but with modern medicine, she is back home in her cozy house next door. I finally laid down to take a nap this afternoon, exhausted, and thinking that this would have been described as the 'Christmas from hell.' But then it occurred to me, there is no Christmas from hell. Hell would never have and never will give us anything to celebrate. And that is what this day and this season is all about. It's not the gifts, it's not the decorations, it's not the food, it's not even our families. It is "The Gift" the one thing, the only thing that makes our lives worth living. the only thing that enables us to be givers ourselves. That's it, that's what we celebrate.

First Day of Winter

2009-12-21T12:08:00.002-06:00

Today would be Aunt Myrtle's 93rd birthday. Sadly, she has been gone from our lives for almost three years. I wrote the following in February 2005.

We went to the Lied Center in Lawrence last night to see the baritone, Jubilant Sykes. I have been a fan of his for two or three years, ever since Phil gave me his “Jubilant” CD for Christmas. It was announced in the spring that he was going to be in Lawrence as part of the concert series but we had to wait until August to order tickets. On the first day, we got them, center seats, first row back, and what a performance!

Although he has sung with the Metropolitan Opera and in various venues throughout Europe and the United States, it was not a sell out crowd. Most of the audience appeared to be season ticket holders and unfamiliar with him, but after the first song, they were mesmerized as well. The first five songs were in Spanish with only a piano for accompaniment, and no microphone, not that he needs one. Then he moved into the more familiar classics and spirituals. Although there is probably nothing he can’t sing, the spirituals were the audience’s favorites. One thing I admire about Jubilant Sykes that he doesn’t wear his faith on his shoulder where it can easily be knocked off, but in his heart. That makes a difference in the audience response to some passionate statements of what he believes. He spoke briefly about the personal heritage of some of the songs, of hearing his grandmother, Paul Robeson and Leotyne Price sing them as a child and how they affected his life and his career. Then he sang "Deep River” acapella and the audience fell silent.

The only down side to an otherwise extraordinary evening were two instances when I saw younger women helping elderly women to their places. Both times, the care and concern was genuine, and so appreciated that I was reminded of my favorite aunt, all of the concerts and operas we attended and how we can no longer do so.

Aunt Myrtle meant almost as much to me as my own mother. With three younger brothers, one of whom was developmentally challenged; my mother didn’t have much time to invest in me so my father and my aunt shared their lives with me instead. My aunt gave me my first sewing machine, taught me to sew, showed me how to garden, how to cook well, and how to be a lady. She gave me an appreciation for the arts, took me to my first museum and to my first opera. For years, we shared the season tickets to the opera where I learned not to fall asleep during the most boring arias. I took her to see Star Wars where she fell asleep when Luke Skywalker was flying through the canyons of the death star being chased by the minions of Darth Vader.

Even though she grew up a hardscrabble farm girl during the depression, she was refined, cultured, and talented. She had a wonderful, artistic eye and was a dress designer before she married my uncle and never worked except as a volunteer, again. She was the most giving person I have known. You learned not to say you liked something in her house or something she had on because she would give it to you on the spot. I once saw her stop what she was doing to take off the dress she was wearing and give it to the person who complimented her on it.

Like Jubilant Sykes, she was proud of her heritage and not afraid to tell you what she thought. We had hours and hours of discussions about my grandmother and grandfather, what it was like growing up in that era, and how many in my generation were not living up to the standards of previous generations. All the while, she encouraged me to be the best I could be. I know she was proud of my success in the business world. Although I would sometimes run to her for advice when I ran into difficult situations, she wouldn’t let me quit or take the easy road. She always reminded me of the heritage of earlier generations.

Now that is all lost to Alzheimer’s. I remember the Christmas a couple of years ago when she came to dinner in an outfit that didn’t quite match. That was the first time I realized that something was wrong and knew that she was slowly leaving us.

I’m thankful I was able to take her to the Metropolitan Opera at Kennedy Center in New York when she came to visit us when we lived in New Jersey. For years she listened to it every Saturday afternoon and it was a joy to be able to share a live performance with her. I remember her commenting that she always heard ‘the lights are going up’ on the radio and didn’t understand what it meant until she saw the lights recede into the ceiling as the performance started.

Those days are forever gone. Instead she doesn’t get out of bed until noon and has worn the front of her head bald from pulling at her hair. Her caretakers try to keep her active, but she continues to go downhill into that long sad goodbye. I miss her. I wish I could dote on her as she did on me, as the two young women with their elderly charges last night.

There comes a time when all that is left is the heritage, the heritage that Jubilant Sykes lives up to so well in his concerts. I only hope I can pass some of my heritage on to my niece as my Aunt Myrtle did to me.

Creativity

2009-12-06T18:09:00.000-06:00

The following is a piece that I wrote years ago, but it is very appropriate for this season.

     Yesterday, May 17th, Sammy Davis Jr, and Jim Henson, both considered to be creative geniuses in their respective fields died and someone paid 82 million dollars for a Van Gogh at Sotheby's. As a fitting end to such a day, my husband and I watched "Dead Poets Society" and I am left to ponder the part that creativity plays in our lives.
     Do we have to be creative? Who is the judge of that creativity? Is it merely a fragile monument to our existence, or something more?
     For some reason yesterday, even before I had heard all of the news of the day, I kept thinking of my friend's father, Mr. Kannard.
     I hardly remember him. I met him only once, a long time ago in Wichita, Kansas. My friend and I had driven down one weekend in her brown '72 Oldsmobile as I recall, the only car she ever bought new and the one which found a premature death in some small Kansas town up by Abilene. I was going to spend the weekend with my college roommate, but on the way we stopped by her parents’ house to visit.
     He had retired from the post office by that time because of his emphysema. All I remember of that meeting is a dark room, even though there were sheer curtains at the windows, and a tall skinny man breathing through an oxygen tube in his nose. He had a care lined face, the kind of face that should be stern, but he wasn't...just quiet.
     From that meeting though, he remembered me. He would send gifts home with his daughter for me. Little things which he made in his workshop in the basement, since he could no longer do any work which required physical exertion. Little stone animals -- the stones polished until they shone. Carefully chosen smaller stones became legs, ears, and noses, larger stones, bodies and heads. He would finish them off with those little plastic eyes with black discs that wiggle around.
     And once, my friend brought me some Christmas decorations. Two carolers made out of acorns. Acorns from a Turkey Oak tree I believe. The shape of the acorns fascinated me so that I looked them up in "Trees of North America."
     They were large acorns with fuzzy, prickly, caps which he used for the heads of the carolers. He sprayed the caps white and painted faces; bright big, blue eyes and red lips on the acorns. Then he added brown cardboard cone shaped bodies with cotton trimming for fur.
     I don’t recall that I ever sat those carolers out except for the first year they were given to me. They were a little too simple for my taste. But although it's probably been at least 15 years since he sent them home with his daughter, I have yet to throw them out. I probably never will. They were one man's gift to me of his creativity...a precious thing indeed.
     He didn't live too many years longer with the emphysema. My friends’ mother is gone now too. But every Christmas, when I take out the ornaments, all the fragile glass ornaments, I find his two snow men made from cardboard, nuts and glue with cotton around the bottom nestled in the bottom of the ornament box, wrapped in tissue which yellows more with every passing year. I find them and I think of him. Occasionally I stumble upon the little rock animals which I have not been able to throw away as well. These too remind me of him. He was only a postman. A postman who's disability forced him to retire sooner than expected. He had nothing to do with his days, so he created. Not great things, not even good things, but cherished things none the less.
     And every Christmas as I unwrap those ornaments, I remember once more, a tall, skinny, quiet man who loved to create.
     Creativity is so fragile and fleeting. It resides in each of us, in such different ways that sometimes we don’t recognize it when we compare it to what we see in the world. Creativity does not have to be measured by the world’s standards, because it is ours, ours alone.
     Often, we don’t struggle hard enough to protect it and it slips out of reach. People, even those we love, will take it away if we let them. Not from vicious motives, but by filling up our time so we can’t be creative, or by something as simple as not acknowledging our unique perspective, whether it be in art, music, writing, or even baking. We don't even have to be good at what we love to do...we just have to love doing it.

I wrote the above almost twenty years ago, but I still have at least one of those little acorn ornaments. It is still cherished. This year, during this season of giving, let's resurrect creativity, both in ourselves and in others. Let's give gifts that truly speak of who we are, not what our money can buy. Let's give someone something they can cherish year after year...something that will keep us in their lives long after we are gone even if it's just an ornament made out of acorns.

Baby It's Cold Outside

2009-12-04T09:40:00.000-06:00

It looks like winter is finally here. We woke up this morning to nineteen degrees and frost covered cars. It's snowing from Texas to Georgia, but hasn't made it this far north yet. It would be a good day for curling up with a good book, but there are too many things to do for the upcoming holiday's. The Angel Tree gifts still need to be purchased which means we will have to venture outside. For the time being, the new furnace and windows are doing their job. Inside the house we're warm and toasty.

Camilia and the kids

2009-11-24T10:44:00.000-06:00

Camilia came to visit yesterday with her three children: Hannah, Hudson and Ava. What a wild time. They are so beautiful, bright and curious. Hannah, who is allergic to anything related to nuts, picked up a walnut shell that had been discarded by a squirrel in the back yard. Then she rubbed her eye, and by the time they left, it was beginning to swell shut. She took it all in stride and it didn't stop her from climbing up in my lap and saying, "I love you". Thankfully, there's Children's Benadryl.

It seems like only yesterday that we offered a room, and what turned out to be our hearts, to a waif of a girl needing a place to stay to be close to her fiance while he was at ESU. She was the first of quite a few beautiful long haired girls who have shared our home. We have been so blessed by their presence and the relationships that have continued since. When she left yesterday, Camilia took the Christmas tree that we decorated together some nine years ago. She wanted it more for the memories than it's value as a Christmas tree which has dropped with every passing year....unlike our memories which continue to be made.

Pass the Drumstick, Please!

2009-11-20T09:32:00.000-06:00

The table is set, we're ready for guests to arrive....wait a minute...that was a time long ago. Long ago when I used to do the entire Thanksgiving dinner by myself, and threatened anyone else who dared to bring another dish as it would wreck havoc with my menu. This year we've been texting, calling and e-mailing for a week to determine who is going to bring what. I'll still be doing the turkey, dressing, and cranberry sauce, but the rest of the dinner for eighteen will be doled out among family who will be coming. Today at rehab we were taking about our mothers and aunts preparing Thanksgiving dinner in the past. All of a sudden I was back in my grandmother's living room waiting for my mother and her sisters to finish up the last minute touches so we could enjoy the fruit of their labor. That generation, with the exception of my ninety year old mother is gone, and I'm not sure those of us that followed did a very good job of picking up the pieces. I missed the holiday with family until we moved back to Kansas ten years ago. That's when I hosted the first Thanksgiving dinner prepared by myself...just ten short years. Now there are others, almost the age that my mother and aunts were in that memory, who are ready to do their part, and I'm ready to pass the torch, or at least the drumstick.

Oh, the Places We'll Go - part 2

2009-11-19T09:00:00.000-06:00

When I signed on for this deal twenty-three years ago, I had such a dim view of the possibilities. I don't know what I was invisioning other than the two of us in our little house on Mackey Street. I must have thought we would grow gray together, but didn't give much thought as to how that would happen. I couldn't see all of the struggles we would have, all of the disappointments and conversely all of the joys and thrills. I didn't know we would be part time parents not only to your kids, but to a variety of others from all different lands and cultures. I didn't know we would live in four different states in at least seven different houses. I didn't know we would be constantly renovating, and when we were not doing that traveling. We've seen the slums of Egypt and Mexico and the view from the Eiffel tower. We've hiked, climbed, canoed, flown, cruised, and in deference to me,taken a train whenever we can. You've put up with my love of animals, and I've put up with your love of anything sports. We've loved, hated, discussed, argued, agreed, disagreed, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Maisie Comes Inside

2009-11-18T11:05:00.000-06:00

It got cold and started to snow Monday, so by Tuesday morning, Maisie, one of the outside cats, decided she finally had enough and wanted to come in. It's a bit earlier in the year than usual, as Maisie will stand the cold better than she will stand another cat. Somewhere along the line, she must have been cornered by another cat and taught a lesson she refuses to forget...cats cannot be trusted. Her forays into the house are usually accompanied by hisses and back arching even before she's seen another cat. This of course arrouses curiosity in the three house cats, especially Emma Lee, who will come bouncing down the stairs from wherever she has been to greet the interloper. A scenario that has repeated itself every winter for the past five years, with clawless Emma yet to harm Masie who still has all of her claws. Emma usually doesn't get that close, but that hasn't stopped the hissing. After a while the indoor cats lose interest and our dog, Ranger takes up his place guarding the door and Maisie in turn. That she is being protected by her natural enemy does not bother Masie, in fact it makes her feel more secure. It makes me wonder, are there any correlations between Maisies actions and our own, perhaps fearing the ones we should trust and trusting the ones we should fear? Curious!

Oh, the Places We'll Go!

2009-09-17T14:07:00.000-05:00

While I'm cleaning and re-organizing, I stop to look through old photo albums and come across the one from our wedding. There we are...surrounded by friends we haven't seen for years...and looking much younger than we do now, although we thought we were old at the time. There was so much ahead of us, many trials and tribulations, and more blessings than we could ever have imagined or dreamed of. We've been so many places. Around the block more than once, you might say. And yet here we are still. After twenty-three years, we're still best friends, companions, lovers, and brothers and sisters in the Lord. You're wiser than you were then, and just as handsome in my eyes. You're all I could have asked for and more. Happy belated anniversary, and thanks for taking this journey with me and for walking with me into the sunset.

I Voted

2008-11-04T18:17:00.000-06:00

It's election day and I voted.

The first time I did so was in 1968 - a very tumultuous year. My friends were being killed in Viet Nam. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been killed here. There was rioting in the streets. Still we went to the polls and we voted. I remember how nervously I walked into the nearby National Guard Armory to cast my ballot, and how grown up I felt when I came out.

I have voted in every election in the forty years since. Sometimes my candidates won and sometimes they didn't. Some of those I voted for turned out to be good presidents, senators and governors, some did not. But what matters most is that I voted. Whatever the outcome of this election, we should all be encouraged. Young people have gone to the polls again. Minorities who have felt disenfranchised in the past have gone to the polls, many for the first time. It appears that when the polls close there will have been a record breaking number of citizens who have voted. Regardless of who the winners will be, this nation, this republic, this democracy will be better for it.

Groundhog Day

2008-02-02T16:54:00.001-06:00

Punxsutawney Phil may have seen his shadow, but it seemed like spring today, after way too much winter. The snow has almost melted completely away and it is warm enough to have the door to the back porch open. Even Emma Lee is contemplating what is would be like to go looking for her shadow today.

In spite of the dire situation in our town with the local meat packing plant laying off upwards of 1500 people, everyone was out and about today and most were in a jovial mood. Even old ladies like me caught the scent of spring in the air. In the parking lot at Wal-Mart, I rode to my car on the back of the shopping cart as if it were a scooter, then drove home with the car windows open.

They say, whoever that ubiquitous 'they' is, that there's another storm on the way. Maybe so, but I think I'll spend the rest of this day kicking up my heels!

Winter Wonderland

2008-02-01T14:11:00.000-06:00

This picture sums up my feelings about this winter, with no end in sight. I've grown tired of computer games and reading. I've grown tired of the solitude and the cold. And over the horizon there is more of the same.

Reflections on Resources

2005-09-01T15:45:00.000-05:00

Yesterday as I peeled peaches to freeze for a winter supply, I kept thinking about all of the hopeless in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast who have had nothing to eat for days. I kept imagining how they would love a sweet and juicy peach.
This morning, as I had my morning Starbuck's coffee, I thought of those that don't even have water to drink.
As we took our cats to the kennel because we will be going on vacation for a couple of weeks, I thought of all of the people who had to leave their pets and everything else they owned behind.
I just now took a shower and thought of all the people slogging through muddy, rancid water with no way to even wash their face.
I am stunned and saddened and searching for answers, but not the same answers for which all of the pundits on cable television are searching. I'm looking at all of us, and wondering why and how do we, in a country that has almost unlimited resources and prosperity, allow so much poverty to exist? Because poverty is the issue here. All of those who stayed, with the exception of some fool-hardy folks who thought it would be a lark, were the poor, infirm and disenfranchised. All of the cable commentators talk about how beautiful New Orleans was. I loved New Orleans like everyone else: the great food, strong coffee and beignets, the beautiful old homes, even the quirky characters on Bourbon Street. But it couldn't have been that beautiful with that many poor lurking on the sidelines. Now I wonder at what I didn't see and what I might be missing in my own back yard. I am going to become a CASA volunteer within the next few weeks (Court Appointed Special Advocate - whose mission is to speak for the best interests of abused and neglected children involved in the juvenile court system.) As such, I'm sure I will be exposed to some of the poverty and neglect in my own back yard. Hopefully, I will make a difference.

Saturday Morning Thoughts

2005-04-09T13:13:00.000-05:00

It’s been a fruitful and frustrating week. Fruitful because the early garden is finally out. In fact, this morning the peas, spinach and lettuce are up. But we had a loss in the back yard as well. The mulberry tree had to be trimmed back because of damage from last winter’s ice storm. That meant the branches holding the bird feeders had to go. We’ve moved the feeders, but the birds are still confused. A blue jay was sitting on top of the light by the patio this morning looking around as if to say “what’s going on around here?”

We spent Wednesday in Kansas City painting my mothers living room. It took almost as long to drive up and back as it did to paint and put things back in place. It’s amazing how fast some things can be completed and how refreshed a few hours of accomplishment can make you feel.

In contrast, the slow and frustrating has been occuring in one of our bedrooms, the one with the leak. When Corina, our foreign exchange student from Moldova moved into that room, we told her not to look at the ceiling. She didn’t seem to mind as teenage girls don’t seem to be aware of their surroundings other than the computer, television, music cds and the clothing on their bodies. Unless a cute boy happens to walk by, something that certainly wasn’t going to happen in that bedroom. We did have the roof replaced while she was here so that she didn’t have to worry about getting her feet wet when she jumped out of bed, but the ceiling has been in disrepair far too long.

This week, we started ripping. It’s not the first ceiling we’ve taken out. That’s what you buy into when you purchase any house over a hundred years old. And, the ceiling is not what is discouraging. It is the windows. This bedroom was one that had bird nests in the windows when we bought the house. We replaced any broken glass and put on a perfunctory coat of paint after we ripped off the black wall paper, but the windows are still pretty bad looking and will not stay open unless they are propped up. After days of chipping, trying to pry open the top half of the window and pry out the compartment cover for the weights, sanding and priming, we reached the conclusion this morning that replacement windows might not be a bad idea. The windows are too poor a condition to be restored, primarily because of the years when the bad roof offered no protection.

Sounds like the struggle I’ve been having with my weight. I read recently that the average woman over forty can count on gaining a pound a year. Well, I’m certainly average, but not sure I want to accept the additional weight. I think sometimes, just like the difference a good sound roof can make for an old house, a good sound head can make a difference to the rest of our body.

Spring

2005-04-04T13:13:00.000-05:00

The Flint Hills have been burning this week, an ancient rite of spring passage that brings new life to the prairie each year.

No matter how long we live here, I am always surprised and confused when it begins. I smelled smoke when I went out front to retrieve the Sunday paper. It wasn’t until later when I saw the haze surrounding the entire town from our back porch, and remembered the blood red sunset of the night before that I put two and two together.

There is beauty in the burn. The lines of fire can be seen for miles. When I was in college, a friend and I would park on a hill on the west side of Emporia and watch the fires from a distance, a view is now obstructed by a housing development. I remember once we drove out into the hills, over the gravel roads, trying to locate a particular fire. It seems we drove almost fifty miles without success. Darkness and old country roads can alter your perception of distances.

The smoke from the burn can create stinging eyes and breathing problems, but it also delivers some of the most glorious sunsets on the planet, a phenomenon that was noted after the explosion of Krakatoa in 1883. For almost three years after that massive explosion, glorious sunsets were observed in much of the western hemisphere. We’re fortunate to have beautiful sunsets year round in this part of Kansas, but they are really magnificent once the burning starts.

The Prairie Fire Festival will be held this week in Cottonwood Falls. We are going to attend the Blue Grass Gospel concert with some friends on Friday night. I suppose we all celebrate the arrival of spring in some fashion and would like to imagine that the lightning strikes that caused the prairie to burn centuries ago sparked a new creativity in the Indians who once called these plains their home.

Thoughts while paying bills on Saturday morning

2005-04-02T09:02:00.000-06:00

I would guess we all dream of greatness when we’re young, but most of us end up the same way: paying bills, licking envelopes and trying to get the remittance from the utility company to fit in the envelope. We’ve accumulated more junk than we know how to deal with, and a few friends along the way. If we’re lucky, we get to spend a few hours in the garden or with a kitty curled up beside us as we read a good book.

We have spent more time mired down by routine than excitement. The happiest moments in our lives have come when and where we least expected it, over dinner with a few good friends, accidentally running into someone we haven't seen in a long time, traveling long distances to spend the dreaded holidays with family, or discovering worship in unexpected places. If we look back, we will note the common thread in the happiest of times is people, not possessions or even achievement.

I love writing and have been writing poetry and making up stories since I was a child. However, as I've gotten older, I've come to realize how easy it would be to let the introspection that comes with writing become all consuming, leaving no room for the relationships that are responsible for the happiest times of my life.

So if very little makes it to this blog, that's ok. Hopefully, I will be laughing with a few friends instead.

Why I Will Probably Never Have Anything Published

2005-03-24T16:55:00.000-06:00

On a perfect day, I pet my cat Parker as I run the water for my bath. He is a gentle, shy cat. This, his primary contact with the human race is very important to him before he crawls into his hidey hole for the day. Then, when I am all scrubbed and clean, I trudge down to my favorite chair with my morning cup of coffee and picking up a recent letter from the table by my chair, I begin an answer to one of those I love far away. "I enjoyed your last letter, so," my mother writes. "do it again." How can I not? My other cat Tiddles joins me in the chair to be petted as I write. Brave cats need loving too. She jumps down when she hears the scrunch of my husband's feet on the gravel coming back from his morning run. He and I talk while he does his exercises. "Less painful that way." he says. The makings of another perfect day.

Later, on my way to the Post office to mail my letter, I stop for a minute to visit with Anna next door. She relates to me her most recent exciting adventure and imparts a little of the wisdom which only a five year old can share with you. "You're perfect, Anna "I tell her, "just perfect."

While it is still morning, before the sun is too high, I must bike to the farm market for some fresh fruit. I choose enough for pie and bicycle back, risking a few minutes to stop and visit with the geese at the river bank on my way back. If I've been wise, I've brought my old bread to feed them, these tame geese which have become so dependent over the years on the handouts of humanity. I then pedal on home taking a detour down the road which goes past the train tracks into the city. I eat some of my fruit as I ride and listen for a far away train on the rails. Company is nice on a bike ride.
Later in the afternoon, when the heat from the pies still fills the kitchen, I walk down the hill to the park. There on the swings, I swing out, high above the traffic going by on the highway below. I swing and wave to the people walking by or waiting for the bus. I swing and my mind becomes blank, except for the wind in my face. I am going to do this until I'm ninety I assure myself as I lean far back for one final climb. I'm never going to stop swinging.

Refreshed, I will climb back up the hill to be greeted by the smell of fresh baked pies. I glance at my watch for the first time this day, there's still time for a few chapters of the book I'm reading before I tidy up for the evening company and start to fix the meal.

There's nothing like good conversation shared over good food. We eat and laugh ourselves silly. "This is good." they say, as they reach for a second helping. This is perfect, I think, as the wives all help me with the dishes. Crowding into my little kitchen we chat about our husbands, their little quirks and all those things which endear them to us as we dry and put away the dishes.

When they leave, my husband and I climb the stairs to sit out on the balcony, listening for the echoes of their footsteps as they walk down the hill to their car. The footsteps are finally be lost to the overriding song of the crickets and the night which overtakes us. We call it a day, and I realize that once again, in this perfect day there was no time for writing.

"Why don't you....? When are you going to....? My friends always ask about my writing. "Someday," I reply. What do I tell my critics who think I am too unmotivated to ever finish anything. "Someday." But then I realize that my writing at best is less than perfect. How can I subtract any of it from my perfect days.

I would like to write, I would like for people to read my writing, but if I have to choose between writing one more page or swinging high out over the street below, I'll swing. I may not always have these perfect days, so while I have them, I'll swing.

Overload

2005-03-24T12:45:00.000-06:00

That’s where I am today. I don’t often pay much attention to any but the local news, but it is hard to escape the news about Terri Schiavo. I feel so sad for her parents and family and that is multiplied by the death of the grandson of two of our friends. Sixteen years old, and last Friday he made a u-turn in front of a truck carrying a load of steel. He was finally declared brain dead and taken off of life support Tuesday. So I’m thinking about brain dead and vegetative state. I know vegetative state from sitting in front of the TV for too long and often felt like I was brain dead after some insane days at work. Both states are pretty miserable, but I still didn’t want to starve.

I’m also thinking of my mentally retarded brother and how the sheltered workshop where he works has begun calling all of the kids (that’s what I call them even though many of them are in their forties and fifties) that work there consumers. They even refer to them as consumers on the ‘incident report’ sheet. Interestingly, one of the boxes that can be checked for resolution to an incident is ‘death of consumer’. I guess that’s what will happen in Terri Schaivo’s case. The incident will be resolved by ‘death of consumer’. It appears that public opinion thinks she is consuming too much: media attention, medical attention, a small space in a small bed. What remains to be seen is what will happen to all of us in this consumer oriented society.

Starting over

2005-03-23T11:08:00.000-06:00

I started this blog months ago, and then ignored it. Writing used to be one of my passions, but after fifteen harrowing years in management at a Fortune 500 company, I fear that I am close to being brain dead. Hopefully, it’s just sensory overload. Receiving fifty to a hundred e-mails per day that have to be responded to immediately doesn’t leave much room for creativity. But, praise be, I’ve left that job behind, so I’m sitting here waiting for the creative juices to begin flowing again, like a sugar maple after my winter of discontent.

I read this and it sounds so stupid, but one has to begin somewhere. For several years I told my husband that he should start blogging. He resisted until one day I showed him a couple of sites and told him he could do a better job. He rose to the challenge, perhaps on shaky legs at first, but now he’s been blogging consistently for the better part of a year.

I think I’ll give it a try.

Sycamore Leaves

2004-10-11T09:20:00.000-05:00

The leaves fall from the sycamore
One by one
And look more like some great bird
Leaping to the ground,
Than a fluttering leaf.

Other trees lose all their leaves
With just one gust of wind,
Leaving a carpet of yellow leaves
Beneath the trees naked branches
As if they had just dropped their petticoat.

Most tenacious of all,
The leaves of the mighty oak
Seem to cling for dear life,
Holding on even into the midst of winter,
Seeming never to realize that
They have been dead for sometime.

For all their differences,
No matter how harshly they protest
Or how easily they give up,
Each year the leaves fall
And winter comes.

A Bed of Wildflowers

2004-09-15T11:51:00.000-05:00

I can’t remember who thought of taking the old truck for a drive first. Probably me. I hated sitting around that house. I was angry at all of them for having moved my grandmother up from the little country town where she had always lived to this perfectly groomed matchbox house if the suburbs of the big city. This house didn’t resemble my grandmother at all. She was supposed to be surrounded by vegetable gardens, wild flowers, raspberry bushes and her banty chicks.
My cousin and I were amusing ourselves with a pack of cards after lunch while the three sisters; aunts and mothers, finished up the dishes. Between the slap of the cards as we shuffled and dealt, I can still hear them discussing the move.
“Someone has to watch out after her. You know how lost she is without Papa.” said Aunt Gladys, “We’re only a block away in case she needs anything.”
“She’s simply too old to live by herself and take care of Evy.” Said my mother. Evy was my invalid aunt, Evelyn, who had always lived with my grandmother.
Then Aunt Mildred chimed in, “It’s just to far a trip down there now that all of us are living in the city. None of us has the time to spend driving down there each week to check up on her.”
This was all said at once. Whenever the three of them got together, whether they were fixing dinner, canning pickles, or quilting, they all spoke at the same time without waiting for a response.
I suppose that’s what happens when you grow up in a family of nine kids. In order to make yourself heard, you just say what’s on your mind. It didn’t matter what the others were saying, no one was listening to anyone else. They were just interested in their own thoughts. That’s part of the advantage of being family, you can talk to yourself out loud and no one thinks you’re any the stranger. I’d gotten used to hearing them talk like that and had become a master at following three conversations without getting confused.
On this particular day, they were all trying to justify their reasons for moving my grandmother; a discussion, which I assumed, was primarily for my benefit, as I was the only one who objected to the move.
Looking back, in all honesty, my reasons for not wanting my grandmother to move were as selfish as theirs. The small country town where she lived was a place where a city girl could shine. In the big city, I was lost among my peers. They never noticed me; I was just the plain little girl who always had her nose in a book. But when I visited my grandmother it was different. I could walk down the street, in my tight pedal pushers and crop top, and all of the farm boys, who came to town on a Saturday afternoon to lean on their trucks, loafing around the town square, would whistle at me. They noticed me. They noticed my pseudo-sophistication. They were impressed…it felt good. Nothing I could do back in the city would impress my classmates in the same way.
So I was a little angry that they’d taken away my once chance to shine. There was however, another side to my resistance to the move that wasn’t quite all selfish. I loved my grandmother, and I felt like at her age, if you took a fish out of water, it wouldn’t live long. Turns out I was right, but that day none of us knew that.
After two games of hearts, listening to them as they fumbled all over each other in my grandmothers new but minuscule kitchen, my cousin and I looked at each other.
“Let’s go!” I said.
“Where?”
“Anywhere. You know your way around here, don’t you?”
“Oh, sure.”
“So, where does everyone hang out?”
“Oh, over on Third there’s Paul‘s drive-in.” She started to clean up as I put away the cards. “I always see a lot of kids there.”
“Anything’s better than sitting around here.”
My cousin was one year younger and had lost her place to shine also. She had moved from the same country town to the city just the year before, so she was a real outcast in her school. Neither one of us was really sure of our identity. We were both struggling, both knowing that no matter how hard we tried, we were both always going to be a little on the homely side. No one was ever going to make us homecoming queen, prom queen, anything like that.
It was that time of year too. Late August. School was going to be starting in two more weeks, and we had to face our recurring reality; once again we were going to be on the outside looking in. Taking off, grabbing a bit of freedom, checking out the local drive-in would be a salve to our wounds…wounded pride or approaching wounded pride, whichever it might be. So, we decided we would go for a coke, anything to escape the confines of that house…assert ourselves!
Borrow the car, that’s what we wanted to do. But that was immediately vetoed by our aunt.
That’s a brand new car. You guys aren’t going to take it to any drive-in.”
So we were stuck with the only alternative, which was the truck. Oh, how I was embarrassed by that truck. It was a 1939 international, one of the last vehicles, I think, made before the war. Nobody I knew had a 1939 International. It was probably the only one left. It was so old that it had been made back in the days when the windshields opened. There was a crank on the dash that you could turn and the windshield would open straight out. That was the only redeeming feature about that truck. It gave you the same sense of freedom as in a convertible, except that you had to be careful or things like bugs would blow in your eyes or even worse, in your mouth.
It was black. Someone had taken it and tried to soup it up. They had taken old bed rails; old iron bed rails, painted them shiny white, and attached them to the back sides of the truck in order to make the sides higher. If you stood up in the back of the truck, it looked like you were in jail. It also had four white wall tires which looked stupid on such an old truck, a white wall wheel mounted on the right side of the truck, and running boards.
The same person that attached the bed rails had also taken the bench seat out of the cab and put in bucket seats. This would have been real cool, except that they were Volkswagen seats, and maroon leather at that. The truck also had a gearshift on the floor which wasn’t cool either. Gearshifts were only on the column in those days. So by and large, although the truck was a source of pride to my father, it was an embarrassment to anyone else who had to drive it.
Years later in the 60’s, after I had graduated from college and had been living on my own for a couple of years in the city, I remember borrowing the truck once again. I was much more sophisticated by that time, so I was even more aware of its inadequacies. I was not however, so sophisticated or wealthy, I should say, as to be able to afford a mover, so my roommate and I were moving from apartment to apartment with all of our worldly goods stashed in the back of the truck. My brother, who was helping with the move, was sitting on top of all of our possessions, trying to hold things down. As we passed some kids sitting on their steps, one of them yelled and pointed us out to the others, “Hey, look, there goes a bunch of ‘furriners’.” Forever planting the vision of Jethro and Ellie Mae Clampett in my mind.
And as if that embarrassing image wasn’t enough for two teenage girls to handle, it wasn’t very easy to drive either. It had a starter button on the floor that you had to press with your left foot while your right foot was on the clutch. It required some acrobatics to get it started. But, it was our only source of freedom….you take what you can get.
There is only so much time you can spend at a drive-in drinking a coke. Neither one of us wanted to go back and face the incessant repartee of our mothers and aunts, so we decided we would go for a drive.
Cities were different then, in the late 50’s. They ended abruptly. Suburban sprawl hadn’t overtaken and destroyed all of the rural roads leading out of them, and there were still a lot of farms that surrounded the cities. Although some had already been abandoned, there were still plenty of old gravel roads that you could drive down. Probably trying to recapture some of the small town that had been abandoned by our family so recently, my cousin and I set off down some of these beckoning roads.
The thing I always liked about country roads was that you didn’t have to know where they were going to take one. You just started down one and wherever it led, you went. You didn’t have to worry about them turning into dead ends, they didn’t have cul-de-sacs then. Occasionally one would stop, but when it did it always ended at another road, so you just had to make the decision as to whether you wanted to turn left or right and you continued on your journey. They always had names like County Road H, County Road BB. Nothing fancy, but if you had the time, and didn’t care where you were going; they were a great way to pass the day.
It was that time of year when all of the late summer flowers were in bloom. The Indian Paint Brush was strewn by the sides of the road along with Queen Ann’s lace and Bachelor Buttons, which bloomed past their prime. They were joined by Yarrow, the old-fashioned Yarrow that is white, not the yellow, and Coneflowers, with their dark centers and drooping pink petals. Somehow I always thought that they should be married to the Indian Paint Brush. They went so well together. Even a few wild Daisies were still in bloom and Black-eyed Susans, thousand and thousands of Black-eyed Susans. They lined all of the roads as we drove down them.
The flowers were so inviting that finally my cousin suggested that we stop the truck and pick some to take back to my grandmother. So we picked a few, enough for a bouquet, drove on, found another meadow that we couldn’t resist and picked a few more.
Finally, we had our hands full, but unable to resist the next meadow, we picked some more and threw them in the back of the truck. After that, we drove down the road, picking flowers, putting them in the bead of the truck because there was no other place to hold them.
Somewhere along the line, I must have dawdled too long when my cousin wanted to drive ahead. I was always the dawdler. “I’m leaving.” She yelled as she got in the truck and started off. So I ran after the truck, jumped on the running board and held on as she slowly drove down the road.
“Hey, if you go a little slower,” I told her, “I can just pick the flowers as we drive along.”
And sure enough, by slowing down to a crawl, I could stand on the running board, holding on to the door handle with one hand, harvesting all the flowers I wanted. As we moved down the country lanes, we took turns doing this, each of us picking lowers as we went along and throwing them in the back of the truck.
It takes a long time to fill up the back of an old ’39 International with flowers. But we did. I’ll never forget the sight of the back of that truck. Pinks, yellow, blues and whites. An absolute bed of wild flowers.
Finally, we pulled off the side of the road. Actually we pulled into a deserted driveway. There were a lot of those out in the country in those days. I suppose there still are if you could find the country. Anyway, we pulled into a driveway and both of us climbed into the back of the truck and just lay there, surrounded by all of the wild flowers, feeling prettier than any homecoming queen had ever felt. We stayed for the longest time, staring up at the blue, blue, late summer sky, dreaming those special dreams usually reserved for times when we were by ourselves….being Cinderella, kissed by the prince….maybe more like Sleeping Beauty, waiting to be awakened. We knew we were as beautiful as anyone else on that day. All we needed was for someone to see that beauty and awaken it in us.
We went home, past fields turning gold in the waning summer sun, to our grandmother’s house where she ran to meet us like the young girl she had once been, while our mothers and aunts stood arms-folded on the porch. We filled her house one last time with our flowers and youthful dreams.

My parents eventually sold the ’39 International. It’s probably rusting away in a junkyard somewhere. Any other remains of that day are tucked someplace in the backs of our minds.
My cousin married, had three kids, and lives in one of those suburban tract houses.
I’m still searching for my prince, still searching for someone who will look at me and see what I look like lying on a bed of wild flowers.

A Quiet Night in Kansas

2004-09-09T11:26:00.000-05:00

It’s a quiet night in Kansas, as most of them are
The air conditioners hum their steady defense
Against the early June heat,
But not so loud as to overwhelm the coo of the dove
Or the twitter of the martins searching out their twilight feast
Even the basset hound two doors down
Has toned down his incessant barking
There are no sounds that alarm.

Across the wide expanse of sky, Kansas winds
Blow a few golden sunset clouds to their destination
Then swoop down closer to the earth
To whisper through the Cottonwood trees.

In the distance you can hear the lonesome whistle of a freight train
But there are no car alarms, no sirens, no airplanes roaring overhead
It’s a quiet night in Kansas, as most of them are.

The Springtime of Morning

2004-09-03T11:58:00.000-05:00

The morning calls, it beckons me to become part of the wakening
To create, to bring forth newness in thought and in action
But somehow through the day, as in the aging of a year
I flatten out, becoming a long, hot lazy summer day
With evening fall, I revive somewhat
Perhaps even taking a short stroll
Until, with the final night fall
I am overtaken by a dead whiteness as if it were winter
There is no creativity left, no life, no thought, no hope
I yearn for nothing more than one more nights hibernation

Where is that continual springtime of days
When energy peaks, taking my creativity with it?
There are volumes of books I would write, in those early morning hours
Hours always filled with birth and creativity
If only they would stay.