A New Vision

At last my writer's block, which began in February following a visit to the emergency room and a cat scan, has dissolved.  The emergency was prompted by a very unusual headache which was severe, lasted seconds, then disappeared for hours, coming back again and again, becoming more frequent as the day drew to a close.  Nothing was detected, but this prompted some blood tests which confirmed my latest thyroid dosage was way too high.  It has since been cut in half which resulted in a kind of whiplash of depression--now lifting.

This got my attention.  Why me?  Why now?  As I pondered this, I realized that I couldn't bring myself to go back into my past memories, with all their emotional upheaval.  I needed a new vision for my book.

Yesterday that vision presented itself.

I will return to my memories, but as a compassionate observer, bringing all the wisdom and spirituality I've gleaned over the years to counsel those parts of me that are still in need of compassion and transformation.  I need this especially as I continue aging.  Did anyone ever tell you it takes Courage to age well?

Rather than continue blogs of my life in chronological order, I'll post occasional portions of my book for your comments and suggestions.

Here is an example of this new approach, in rough draft form:

I’m frozen by the thought of my death. This is embarrassing because I’m supposed to be a woman of Faith, someone who has great positive expectations that my consciousness in some form will continue, that there will be a “next grand adventure,” that I will at last see God face to face, the greatest delight possible.

 “There’s no reason to be afraid,” a saner part of me tells my petrified self.  “Remember that dream you had in the Seventies?”

In that astounding dream, I find myself in “the next life.”  I spot a man there whom I deeply love.  We are unusual creatures; not our human selves.  We are made of colored beams of light.  He is a radiant, transparent blue-green life form and I am a glowing alizarin crimson being.  As we behold each other, we merge so that our colors intermingle. 

My feelings sparkle.  We truly “see through” each other without any embarrassment or barriers or boundaries, with complete love and acceptance.  The intimacy is dazzling, and intense, it’s as if I’m experiencing a climax in love making in which I’m fully present and this electrifying bliss becomes our natural state of being.  Because we are not physical beings, we are able to sustain this state indefinitely. It’s normal in this dimension.

Reflecting back to this dream today, I wonder at myself…that I get bound up in my interior paralysis over this thing called death.  How can anyone with such a dream lose touch with that phenomenal sense of awe?

 

I think the reason I forgot this dream is that the next morning I woke up to the routines of my ordinary life and felt displaced, lost, and burdened by a deep grief, a sense of profound loss. That vivid experience which I still carried had only been a dream that burned off  like the fog over the ocean on a sunny day.  On one level this dream gave me hope that this kind of intimate ecstasy is possible in our next life.  On another level, the marvel that I experienced was very seducing, like the Turkish Delight the White Witch gives Edmund to bewitch him.  He can't think of anything but getting more of it regardless of cost. I couldn't think of anything but returning to that heavenly realm. I remember it was a terrible struggle to regain my sense of the preciousness in the ordinary moment.

Today I choose to set my reaction to the dream aside and regain its gift.

“Light a candle on an altar and set it in the darkness of your terror,” my priestess-self counsels. “Take time to ponder that other world, the blue-green and crimson beings that merged. You have all the heat in you to melt the icy fear.”                                                                 END

Heavy Duty Stuff

This is the question I've been asked lately--where have you been?  Well, two things actually.  When I finished writing about my childhood, I was sitting in my secretarial chair in front of my computer when my heart sank into my stomach--is that really possible?  Okay, well maybe not, but that's what it felt like. It's taken two months to get some insight as to why I descended into the Depths of Despond. 

I think I got in touch with the emptiness of that inner child self, that real self, that got lost when my environment convinced me that I lived to make other people comfortable.  Much of my energy went into trying to make my surroundings harmonious, safe, and livable.  The only problem was, I was only a baby, a toddler, a child, a teenager.  What did I know?

What I didn't know was, that no matter what, you don't want to give up your inner awareness of what is true for you and surrender that to those outside you.  Of course when those outside you are giants, it's pretty tough to do.

I think my compliance began at the earliest possible moment, when during World War II, life was chaotic, scary and unpredictable.  In our family, two immediate family members were killed and one taken into a German POW camp. As a new baby coming into this world, all the adult hopes got focused in my new life, and because all the grown ups in my world were fragile and fragmented, I figured out pretty soon not to make a fuss, not to make a mess, and to ignore my own needs.

The way I see it this morning back at the computer trying to catch my breath from some heavy gardening, I lost my soul very early; and, had I been a member of an ancient tribal group, perhaps a Shaman would have been called for to retrieve my lost soul. Instead, my very loss of soul was actually a kind of initiation to become a Shaman myself, an impetus to follow the pathway from sickness to healing which led to my becoming a modern-Christian-type-Shaman, my own label--Spiritual Director, backed up with a master's degree from a reputable university.

One problem with loss of soul is that the physical body feels deserted and does everything it can to get the soul back.  The body does this by getting sick, having accidents, whatever it takes to bring consciousness back into itself, to get the mind's attention.  But who in this day and age in America ever thinks like a Shaman?  Well, maybe a few are left, but I haven't seen any signs out lately.

One of the books I've read during this cumbrous melancholy is The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller.  She verifies my experience when she talks about the "repressed pain" of childhood, "I sometimes ask myself whether it will ever be possible for us to grasp the extent of the loneliness and desertion to which we were exposed as children." Don't you hate feeling those old, stuffy, feelings?  It reminds me of a poster I used to have in my Persian Melon kitchen in the 1970's--"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable!"  Ms. Miller goes on to ponder, "...she learns that the awareness of old feelings is not deadly but liberating." 

So that's what I'm currently doing...grasping the extent of my loneliness and desertion as a child...and I'm through the worst of it I think.  That part of my soul is no longer lost, and I'm embracing it with compassion and awe for the child I was who could compartmentalize herself in her attempts to survive.  How smart she was!  How generous! How innocent of any awareness of self-betrayal! She still lives within me, and we are spending time together as I no longer shy away from her pain.

So this is what's been behind my writer's block.  Ahhhh...the vicissitudes of the writing life.

Chapter 10--Mixed Feelings

Note: Some names have been changed for privacy reasons.

As I came to the end of eighth grade, LeRoy and his family prepared to move to Idaho where his dad had a new job. I don’t remember my feelings at this enormous loss, but given my history, I must have been swallowed up by grief for some time. Missing him, I tearfully prepared to start high school.

Douglas County High met in an impressive, but very old brick building, now the Carson Valley Museum and Cultural Center on Gardnerville’s main street. I say impressive because of the high white columns and many stairs leading up to the high, heavy doors. It was designed by Frederic Delongchamps, a popular architect who designed the Reno downtown post office, Reno's Riverside Hotel (now apartments) and the Washoe County court house. It would be my campus until 1957 when as a Junior, we moved into the new high school building just behind the old.

            The upper classmen seemed so grown up; I held them in awe. They didn’t associate with lower classmen, so I admired them from a distance. Whitey Plimpton and Denise Aldax were my idols. To me they were as untouchable and fascinating as any movie stars. I had the same admiration for all upper classmen then that I have for Bill Gates and his wife today, assuming they were all smart and good. 

Instead of having one teacher for all my classes, we now went to different rooms where teachers specialized in various subjects like math and English. And of course there were new boys.  I was noticed by one boy in particular—Brad Parker, the son of a rancher who lived south of town.  He had an impressive 1956 Chevy, shiny black with a streak of green along the side. Brad was a few inches taller than my five foot two, lean and athletic, with dark hair in a crew cut. His muscles were primed by “bucking bales” during hay season.  I was pleased to be noticed by an upper classman, and I was flattered by the attention.

When he had some free time after school, he would come driving past my house and “rev” his engine a few times before going on down the street. My heart beating a little faster I ran to the window to see the car heading away.  Eventually we began to go to dances together. At one particular dance, the April Prom, we’d had a great time dancing and enjoying our friends. I wore a satiny formal that my mother helped me pick out at Learners, a women’s store in Reno.  The dress had swirling patterns of blues and greens with a harem skirt and rhinestone spaghetti straps. Mom was always there to find just the right outfit for a special occasion, often spending more than she planned, and whispering, “Don’t tell you father how much we spent on this!”

When Brad arrived at the door, I saw in his hand a transparent box with a fragrant corsage of gardenias.  Thrusting it into my hand, he seemed uneasy about what to do next.  Mom helped by taking the package, removing the flowers and pinning them on for me.  I went to the mirror, and standing on tip toes, smiled back at myself looking very sophisticated.  I handed my coat to Brad who held it while I slipped it on, and off we went.  I don’t remember if we had a band or just the 33 ½ vinyl rpms or 45s.  I suspect the latter.

When we came out of the dance, a couple of inches of wet, spring snow covered the trees that were just beginning to leaf out.  The street lights caused the heavy laden boughs to sparkle and my eyes opened wide to drink in the beauty.  I spun around with my arms open breathing in every last detail.  Then, with my feet feeling the cold wetness, Brad and I headed for his car.  It was only three blocks to home, and we laughed together as we remembered the dance.

When I got home that night something didn’t feel right, and Brad let me out after only one long, good night kiss. The living room was dark, and Mom was pacing back and forth in front of the plate glass window, chewing her nails and mumbling her worries to no one.  My heart sank. All memory of my wonderful evening vanished.

“Mom, what’s the matter?”

With pained words, she blurted out, “Your dad and I had an argument, and he hasn’t come home!”

I wanted to fix things. I needed to fix things. That’s the role of the “hero” in an alcoholic home.

“Mom, where do you think he might have gone?”

She shook her head.  I ran into my room, stripped off my dancing clothes, and pulled on my jeans, sweatshirt and some snow boots, at the same time scanning old memories as to where he might be…the store...the bar at the Minden Inn…some other place?  I wasn’t driving yet, so I could only walk the few blocks to see if he was nearby.  I pulled on my jacket with hood and headed out.  As I came to the CVIC Hall where we had been dancing just minutes before, I saw my friends still in their prom clothes getting into their cars.

 I contrasted my circumstances with theirs, and it didn’t compare favorably.  I was searching for my father who probably had been drinking. He wasn't a sloppy drunk, and I didn't know if anyone but family knew he drank. His outer life was filled with community service like head of the Chamber of Commerce. But that night I was filled with mixed feelings.  On the one hand I felt “put upon,” sorry for myself, and on the other, I felt proud that I was unique. I was acting as my mother’s champion.  I would make things better.

I didn’t find my dad that night.  I came home cold, wet, discouraged and apprehensive. Not a good ending for a “champion.”

“Mom, I’m sorry I couldn’t find Dad.” She just nodded sadly. I went to my room and somehow managed to sleep with what felt like a hole in my mid section the size of a cannon ball.  I wonder if experiences like this led to my taking on projects that were too difficult for me later on, still trying to prove my worth, and often failure came with my attempts.

Sometime in the night he came home, but it was too late to be the hero. I felt like the goat.

Brad and I continued dating, and one of the things he liked me to do with him was drag racing.  We would meet some of our friends after dinner out on Highway 88, a north-south highway out of Minden going over Carson pass and into California.  There was almost no traffic there in the 50’s.  The guys would line up their cars next to each other, two at a time, rev their engines as if they were getting read to blast off, and with tires squealing, charge up the road as fast as they could go, slamming the gear shift into first, second and third so rapidly, you could barely see their hands move.  I sat next to Brad, tense and nervous, wishing I was somewhere else and at the same time my heart beating fast with excitement.  Every ounce of male determination, energy, muscle, and grit went into this for the guys.  It was competition to the max, and I was along for the ride.  My role was to be a cheerleader for all this testosterone. Today I’m grateful there were no accidents, and I shake my gray-haired head at our daring.

.

Chapter 9—Disillusioned and Learning

As long as I can remember I’ve been searching. What I was searching for I couldn’t say for many years. My search was passive and almost invisible until my Sunday school teacher shot holes in my simple faith the fall I turned thirteen. This marked an initiation into a totally secular way of life, a turning away from the little awareness of Truth I’d gleaned. That year our church class of eighth graders was filled with high energy, every class was a chance to socialize with all my best friends and my new boyfriend, LeRoy Nutting. But that youthful simplicity and joy in my faith ended on a fateful Sunday in 1954 as Mrs. Decker launched into her “enlightened” teaching on the debunking of the Virgin Birth.

            Now up until that day, I wasn’t any Bible expert. I hadn’t memorized more than two psalms and no bible verses. I had no opinion on other religions or who was in or who was out, what was acceptable and what was heresy; I just loved my little white bible with my name engraved in gold leaf—Nancy Lee Watson.  My childlike assumption about what that bible contained was that it was full of good stories from a long time ago, and these stories were fun to enter into in my imagination.  I could picture Daniel in the lion’s den, and I hoped my faith could stop the mouths of lions. I cheered at David conquering the giant, Goliath, with God’s help, and wondered if I could be so brave. I loved the baby, Jesus born in a stable in Bethlehem, and hoped that my family would love and help each other more.

Whether these stories were literally true or legendary, or inspired by God but not literally true, or something else didn’t enter my thoughts. I simply believed them as they were written. What was important and essential was that these stories inspired a sense of radiance, revealed a sparkling cosmos bigger than the one I lived in day-to-day, stirred a sense of wonder that drew devotion out of my inner soul for this God who mysteriously became involved in lives and accomplished miracles.  Sunday school, the bible, hymn singing all pointed to this light and luminous other world; and my undiscriminating heart resonated to its numinosity.

Enter Mrs. Decker. Mrs. Decker was an overstuffed, middle-aged woman who wore tweed suits and had an attitude that said, “I am so very informed and modern in my thinking!”  During one class, she launched into her version of the birth of Christ, “Now the bible says that Mary was a virgin, and that God gave her Jesus in a miraculous happening; but we don’t have to accept this ancient and superstitious tale.  Mary could easily have been a virgin, but contained within herself both male and female parts which could produce the child quite easily.  We can see this in nature.  Many plants have complete flowers with both male and female parts….”

Growing up in a ranching and farming community, you would think that I was well acquainted with the reproductive process, but I was a town kid, and the only sexual sight I had witnessed was the castrating of the male calves at branding time when I visited Sandra Galeppi, a school mate who lived on a ranch.  Oh, another classmate and I had sneaked a medical book from my parents’ bookshelves, had perused various genital diagrams, found them disgusting, and decided we would never have intercourse, but just swim in a pool with our husband and get pregnant that way, like fish, no physical contact necessary. (I have no idea how we arrived at this.) That was the extent of my sexual thinking. So with Mrs. Decker tying the Virgin Mary to a plant which could reproduce itself sexually my mental acuity began to fade. My mind kind of tried to wrap around her words, but I couldn’t make sense of her lesson. 

What really punctured my faith-filled heart was that God didn’t do miracles; it was all ancient superstitious stuff, something out of the wilds of time when the inquisition burned people at the stake for being witches. Some beliefs like the virgin birth were for these dark ages, and the bible stories were nothing more than stories. For several years I kept my religion on a shelf marked “Antiques.”

 In this crisis of faith, my relationship to the “numinous,” to God, would go underground in my psyche for years. Yet, the truth of supernatural events occurring in everyday life like I learned about in Sunday school became a holy bubble in my soul, and one day it would resurface. Perhaps if I’d been in a family that respected thoughts and feelings, I might have talked it over with them. I didn’t. I never went back to Sunday school.  I gave up believing in miracles…for a season. 

I am stunned at what serious harm was done in that few minutes. Mrs. Decker had absolutely no idea how her ideas could affect a preadolescent whose faith was simple and literal, quite normal for that phase of development.  Because I dropped out of church then, it left me vulnerable to cultural biases without the balancing influence of faith.

How important it is for churches to train their teachers rather than accept warm bodies to show up and “deal with the kids.”  But the Spirit of Life didn’t leave me there.  The faith still breathed in me and only waited for a kinder season to re-emerge.

*********

Summers in middle school were filled with 4-H, a youth organization that taught the farm and ranch kids about raising animals and the town kids about cooking, sewing, and crafts for the girls like embroidery, crochet, and knitting. At the country fair we would show our handiwork and get assorted colored ribbons depending on the excellence of our work. My mom was really “into it,” and pushed me to do and redo my work repeatedly, so I could get a blue ribbon, or even better, a purple ribbon. I boiled under her perfectionism.

One 4-H leader, Lena Neddenriep, a German woman who tolerated no nonsense, hand picked me along with three others and her daughter to be a select group of students.  Because I two of my friends were included, I continued to attend, even though it was exhausting trying to be faultless. We learned to knit the German way, which Lena felt surpassed the American technique by far. We learned to crochet and embroider, with She Who Must Be Obeyed looking over our shoulder.  I didn’t appreciate it then, but when I wanted to entertain myself during a long illness years later, because she was available and shared her expertise, my life was filled with quilting, knitting, crocheting and embroidering which helped me feel useful and created beauty and comfort.  Sometimes it just takes years before we reap the benefits of an unpleasant experience.

Another 4-H leader was Mrs. Scossa who knew how to make bread and anything made with yeast.  Various moms took turns driving us out to her ranch and dropping us off for the afternoon.  We learned how to knead the bread with just the right wrist motion, pushing and pulling the dough toward us and away, when to stop adding flour so the dough wouldn’t be too stiff, how long to let it rise and how to punch it down.  Everything from cinnamon rolls to a braided pineapple Christmas bread got baked in her ample kitchen. 

During one class, her large container of fat drippings was knocked off the stove.  At least a quart of old fat splattered all over the floor, chairs and wall paper.  Expecting the worst, a good bit of yelling and shaming, I cringed as she came into the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about.  She did the most surprising thing. With only the words, “Well, you’d better get to cleaning it up,” she turned and left the room.  Not a word of condemnation.  No yelling.  No shaming.  She must have known we felt bad enough as it was.  Instead of the usual condemnation my mother could heap on me, I felt relief.  I was pardoned. I felt respected, a novel experience. Within just a few minutes we had it all in hand and called her in to see.  Our lesson went on as if nothing had ever happened.

Toward the end of the summer we had the chance to compete in demonstrations of our bread making for a $50 savings bond.  I practiced and practiced making a Swedish tea ring with cinnamon, butter and raisins as filling. Needing some patter to go with the demonstration, I studied the theory behind why we combined the ingredients in a certain way, like adding the yeast before the oil so it would continue a quick rise.  

When my turn came, I stepped up boldly in my green 4-H headband and bleached white apron, began my story of yeast dough making, adding the various ingredients as I talked.  There were several stages of the dough, the dough I’d just made; the dough after the rising which I punched down and rolled out to fill, shape and cut; and the browned and decorated Swedish Tea Ring all browned and frosted with a white vanilla icing, maraschino cherries and pecans. Everyone applauded, and I was thrilled. 

It wasn’t until later when I was cleaning up that I discovered I had forgotten to add the egg.  No one else noticed either, and I won the $50 savings bond.  To this day I have no idea whatever happened to that bond.  My best guess would be that Mom figured she’d earned it buying all the ingredients over the summer, not to mention the gas to drive us out to Mrs. Scossa’s ranch.  What I was told, was that it took a number of years for the bond to mature, and by then I’d forgotten all about it. I would have preferred some kind of celebration when the bond matured, like, "Nancy, guess what? That $50 bond you won is ready. We were so proud of you! What would you like to do with it?"

Chapter 8—Love and Loss

            My first great love was LeRoy Nutting, son of the high school principal.  We met in what today would be called Junior High, in eighth grade.  He had a flat-top, a short haircut that was combed with wax to stand straight up on top. It was popular in 1955. He was awesome at playing the piano, all kinds of music, from Broadway tunes to Boogie-Woogie.  Since it was puppy love, there was no "hanky-panky."  I think the most we did for several months was to hold hands in the movies.  Then at Christmas time, Karen, a classmate, invited the class to her house for a party with food and dancing.  We didn’t know much about dancing, but we could hold on to each other and move our feet a bit. 

            After the party got going, someone turned the lights out so only the Christmas tree lights with their red, blue, yellow and green glowed, while slow music was put on the record player. LeRoy held me in his arms, my cheek against his.  The room was quite warm, and the thrill of being close added to that heat.  Everything went into slow motion as we swayed to the sounds of Secret Love by Doris Day.  I wanted to kiss him and he wanted to kiss me, but we were afraid.  Then, in a brief moment, as quick as a butterfly landing on a flower, he brushed his lips over mine. Chills ran down my spine. 

            As the school year went on, LeRoy developed all kinds of friends, and some of them were other girls.  One day I was feeling particularly jealous, angry and desolate as he spent a lot of time with one of them.  After school I went up to my room under the eves, and wondered if there might be some solace in Proverbs. I had a little white Bible with my name in gold on the cover.  I opened and began reading, and for the first time I felt like God spoke to me.  It was about love, and when love is not returned, how it hurts. I learned later that the time LeRoy spent with the other girl was for a project they had been given by our teacher, and all was well again. 

           I don’t remember being surprised that the scripture spoke to my heart at that time, but I’m impressed that I turned to scripture when my first romantic stirrings were disturbed, impressed that such a young person would think to find life and comfort in words written so long ago. Many years later I learned to read scriptures as God’s love letter to me, and would find further deep comfort and wisdom at just the right moment.

           While I was practicing being in love, my parents who couldn’t get away from the family business for vacations, suddenly announced they had bought a cabin at Lake Tahoe for back taxes. We went up to investigate.  There was a small kitchen cabin just big enough for a wood stove, small table with chairs and some shelving.  In front of the cabin was a hand pump to get our water, and way out back, the necessary shed which we avoided as long as possible.  Next to the kitchen, was a large, square cabin with a round, black iron fireplace in the middle.  Beds were arranged around the knotty pine walls, and if it hadn't been cold most of the time, it would have felt like home.  When it was time to wash dishes, one of us would pump the water into a large dishpan and put in on the wood stove to heat.  It was a kind of deluxe camping out.  I wasn’t much interested, though, unless my friends could come along.

            Sometime that year, LeRoy and I were at a football game.  I was a cheerleader, and we were shouting and stirring up the crowd for our team, the Cubs.  From somewhere, the news fanned out over those gathered.  Paul Aldax, a classmate and good friend, had been shot in a hunting accident by another student.  This was death’s first close touch, and I was nauseated with alarm, tears running down my face. The whole crowd got quiet.  We left the game that night shaken by the terrible news.

            School was let out for the funeral which was held at St. Gall’s.  I’d never been in a Catholic church, and even though I was welcome that day with the rest of my class, I felt like I’d come into another world and didn’t quite belong. The ceiling was painted a wondrous blue and there were symbols I didn’t understand.  It was both inspiring and intimidating.

            For days I was heavy hearted, quiet inside and tearful.  I couldn’t get my mind around the fact that one day Paul was alive and full of life and the next, totally gone. My faith did not include the possibility of an ongoing mystical kind of life. It was too much to take in. Then there was the other part of the tragedy.  The school cook’s son was the one who had shot him accidentally.  The cook was Our Sunday School Superintendent, and I loved and respected her.  There was no room in my soul to be with this kind of tragedy, and there was no help from the adults in my life.  There in my cocoon, in a quiet kind of way, I tried to contain feeling alone, lost, sad, confused and horrified.   Withdrawn and hunkered down, I didn't even think of my little white bible.

            This was an initiation of sorts, and I needed what anthropologists call a “ritual elder,” someone who has the wisdom to share with someone younger, to help them understand life, so they can stand up to life’s hardships without being permanently wounded. I also needed help finding that sacred space within where Creative Love could work transformation. Although I didn’t have this support then, I would learn to seek it out. What would life be like if parents understood and could perform this role?

Chapter 7—A New School

            Fifth through eighth grades meant a new school which was just next door to my friend Cookie’s house, a block from my home. I could walk to and from easily. We had a merry-go-round that we could jump on as someone pushed, or we could all push and then jump on and gleefully spin around until we were dizzy.  We had monkey-bars which let us swing upside down and do all kinds of gymnastic tricks. One day I fell on my head which meant many chiropractic appoints ever since.

The slide seemed to be so tall it reached the sky, and we could shoot down its great expanse at tremendous speeds or climb up the metal poles that braced it.  At least Cookie could.  She could climb anything, especially the ancient weeping birch in her front yard.  I envied her athletic ability.  Behind the school was a grassy field for baseball, football, Rover-Red-Rover and other sports. The school itself was very old. I had to push with all my might to get through the heavy, high wooden doors.  Inside was the waxy smell of the varnished hardwood floors.

            One of the real perks of walking to school was being able to come home for lunch with Mom.  Just the two of us.  The old kitchen radio was on that played country western music in the morning. Now it was set to the station broadcasting Mom’s favorite soap opera, Pepper Young’s Family, sponsored by Beech Nut Gum and Camay, the soap of beautiful women.  Lunch was always a bowl of Campbell’s soup and a Wonder Bread sandwich, usually tuna.  I don’t ever remember Mom’s usual criticism or advice giving, just a sense of home, security, of safety and warmth.  This kind of comfortable tenderness was so rare in my family, and it helped to lessen my sense of being on the outside looking in.

            A buying trip to San Francisco meant Mom and Dad had to find some place for us to stay.  Susan and Steven were sent to my Dad’s father and step-mother in Folsom, California near Sacramento. I was scheduled to go to Mom’s parents in Reno, and I could hardly wait.  It would mean being the center of attention, outings to the Mackay School of Mines rock museum with Grandpa, and graham crackers with butter and a cup of milk at bedtime with Grandma. Maybe even a movie at the old Granada Theater. I could lay aside my cocoon for a few days and breathe in the rarefied air of unconditional love.

            Just days before our scheduled departure, Grandma pleaded exhaustion, and Mom had to generate a new scenario. Her best option was to send me to her old high school buddy, Dee, who lived in Fair Oaks, also near Sacramento. I didn’t know Dee and her husband, Harry, or her daughter Carolyn, or the house, or the smells of eucalyptus or the new tastes of unfamiliar foods. Not only did I have my cocoon on, I added several layers.

            By the third day, I couldn’t eat, cried a lot, stayed in bed.  Dee had some of Carolyn’s friends over hoping to snap me out of my funk.  As I sat on the porch with these girls and listened to their bragging about how they went to middle school with underpants off to tease the boys, something inside me crashed. My Puritan morality couldn’t find support here either. I was way over my head in a cross-cultural experience.

            I began to hibernate with the bed covers over me, repeatedly crying to go to be with my brother and sister, even though they were so much younger. Now if I’d been five or six, I wouldn’t see my behavior as that odd, but I was at least ten years old, maybe even twelve, and I felt orphaned, abandoned big time.  For me, this was a concentration camp. After a second day without my taking food or water, Dee became alarmed, and took me to my Dad’s parents. I calmed down a little and began to eat a bit, but I remained silent and aloof.  I often climbed a tree in the front yard and took out a one dollar bill my Mom had left with me, smelling the smell of my mother’s perfume and pining for home. After a few days, Mom and Dad returned and took us home to what I had come to experience as normal.

            Some children who have an alcoholic parent become absolutely petrified of desertion.  The emotional unavailability of my mom, because of her intense focus on dad, and dad’s unavailability because of alcohol and work produced a feeling of unworthiness in me, and anything that felt like abandonment produced the extreme symptoms I experienced during that time at Dee’s.

           In my new school, my fifth grade teacher was Miss Cody Shaw. It was whispered that her brother had been killed in the Korean War, and we were all to be very respectful of her broken heart.  She was a great teacher, tender and strict, but her most valuable contribution to my life was the adventures of Marco Polo. Our family didn’t travel, and these stories whisked me up into great fantasies of the mysterious East and great and exciting happenings across the sea.  I did the normal reading, writing and arithmetic, but wait until Marco Polo came on the scene.  I was entranced. Although they weren't the same as the bible stories I'd read, they held a certain luminosity that furthered my love of learning.

            This was also the year we had our first dance, a Boy Scout dance.  No one invited anyone particular, and we didn’t dress up.  We all just showed up.  I remember being strangely popular and only later realized it must have been because I would cuddle up to my partner and put my head on his shoulder.  I wasn’t fussy because I was a sucker for romance.  My other romantic gestures included passing notes during classes to who ever had my heart at the moment. There was the thrill of doing something forbidden.

            By sixth grade, I had developed a certain expertise at math, and during a math test, a boy named Harold whispered for me to give him the answers.  As I filled in my answers, I would quietly fill him in too.  I was promptly brought up on charges of cheating. Just trying to be helpful.  Not feeling particularly guilty about the whole thing, I expected it to blow over quickly.  However, we had class officers who met together to decide the punishment for such as I, and their creative penalty had me scheduled to play one full recess of football with the boys.  Thinking this was great fun, the boys proceeded to nominate me to carry the ball.  I was tackled…repeatedly…still wearing those little cotton dresses.  Not being used to rambunctious play, I felt like a victim being pummeled and beat up with lots of scrapes and bruises.  But I wasn’t going to cry.

            I thought the worst was behind me, but then I stumbled onto a mean dog in the neighborhood.  In those days, none of us kept our dogs penned in and they ran where they wanted.  This dog was a biter, and belonged to a beloved member of the community, my first grade teacher, Mrs. Booth.  With her he was probably an angel.  But I’d never had any trouble with him, so I wasn’t afraid of him.

            Then one day I went over to see if anyone was home at the Chambers’. All of us kids liked to visit the Chamber’s house across the street.  Myron and Byron were retired twin brothers, one of them married to “Grandma” Chambers, and they liked to tell stories of the old days.  Just being with them on the back porch listening to their drawl and their attitude of having timeless space for us was a big draw.  I climbed up on a pillar to better see into the house.  It was dark and no one seemed to be at home.  When I jumped down, I accidentally landed on Mrs. Booth’s dog.  Quick as a shot, he jumped at my face and took a bite.  I screamed and dashed for home leaving my sandals in the street.

            My mother met me at the door, my face dripping in blood.  Grabbing a dishtowel to staunch the flow, she bundled me into the car and we raced down to Dr. Hand’s office.  It turned out the dog had taken a piece out of my upper lip.  Mom, who was frantic over loose teeth, was coldly calm, but fretted about my looks.  Dr. Hand simply accepted the whole thing matter-of-factually, cleansed the lesion, reassured my mother, and gave us a powder to apply to the wound.  Today you can barely notice anything.  It never gave me any sense of self consciousness.  When it could have been my eyes or nose, I felt there must have been some divine intervention. 

            Mrs. Booth’s dog disappeared for good.  My mother only hinted that Dad took his rifle one night and  disposed of the animal.  That was the way of country towns.  You took matters into your own hands without giving it much thought.

Noticing Others

Chapter 5

            Second grade is a blur, probably because the teacher was a perfect replica of  The
Wicked Witch of the West. And not only did she put a spell on the classroom, she oversaw the lunch room on certain days too.  One day, as I headed down the hallway to lunch, I smelled my greatest fear—the stringy, slimy, stewed tomato and brown rice casserole that made me gag.  This posed a dilemma.  I couldn’t get to recess without cleaning my plate, and I couldn’t dispose of it in the garbage either.  I had to figure out a way to get rid of the dreaded food.  An nifty plot began to take shape in my mind.  I’d eat the fruit and bread, and put the offending food in my mouth but not swallow, then spit it out in the girls’ room when I had safely negotiated the exit.  

            I began to get nervous as I listened to the many chattering voices next to me.  I waited until the Wicked Witch’s back was turned so I could execute my plan.  I had to wait longer than usual because she-with-hair-pulled-severely-back, sent her beady eyes roaming the room looking for the least mischief.  The lunch room began to empty.  If I didn’t hurry, I couldn’t get away with it.  The Witch turned her back, and I stuffed my cheeks with the hated casserole.  My plate clean, I headed for the counter to turn in my dirty dishes, not realizing I looked like a healthy chipmunk.  I pushed my empty plate and utensils through to the other side.  When I turned around, I collided with HER.  In a voice not unlike my father’s, she commanded me to swallow. I froze.  I melted into a puddle of dread, chocking the miserable mess down and bolting for the door.  Outside, I found some friends playing jacks, and I calmed myself down taking the ball in my hand for a turn. Play is always a good remedy for distress.

            School itself, the studies, the spelling bees, this rule and that, were just things I had to put up with, a kind of doing one’s duty to society.  Then a special day would break up the repetitiveness.  I loved Valentine’s Day in third grade because we got to make our own post office box for incoming valentines.  We’d decorate shoe boxes with red crepe paper and white school paste, cut-outs and decorations of paper lace and ribbon, then cut a slit in the top with our name.  On that day of pink and redness, of little candy hearts with “so fine”, “all mine”, written on them, we’d go around to the other boxes and leave a valentine.  I thought everybody gave everybody one, but when Andy, a kind of bumbling, awkward kid who flunked third grade the year before, got only three, my heart started to bleed.  I had a special feeling for him because the year before, when I was sitting behind him in the bus on the way home, he’d stuck his arm out a window as we came to a stop sign that snapped his arm back.  He was in a cast forever…well, almost.

            This began an inner knowing to pray for others.  There’d be that inner tug of sadness and wanting to make it all better.  To stop the hurting.  I often prayed following Sunday School. After we rode our bikes home, there were the funny papers to read.  I’d lie on the floor, head in my hands, the big pages opened so I could read my favorite strips, like “Nancy,” my namesake.  Other family members were doing what they liked best, and the great, shiny radio console, at least as tall as me, would be tuned to the opera or the news.  No TV’s, cell phones, video games or e-readers in those days.  Some days I heard bad news, like the year the snow was so deep in the Sierra’s the six miles of snow sheds that protected the Central-Pacific’s tracks fell in and trapped the passengers.  Here came that inner tug of sadness and alarm, and there in my cocoon, I’d ask God to help.  On a different Sunday the news portrayed the disaster of a little girl who fell into a well and it was taking a long time to get her out.  I felt her aloneness, her pain, the dark creeping into my bones imagining myself in a similar mess.  The tug.  More prayers. I felt a connection to the Creative Mystery, and it drew me into my own private inner sanctum to plead the causes of others.

            Then in third grade I got myself in a real jam. School budgets were still recovering from the war years in 1950, and students received one pencil with eraser about every six weeks when reports cards came out. Wanting to please the teacher, I kept my papers neat, my answers legible, but to do this I had to use up my eraser. I tried to erase a mistake with the worn eraser, but the metal edges that held it in place tore a hole instead.  This meant getting a failing grade, and my stomach knotted up and my breathing almost stopped.  My mother was training me as a perfectionist. I felt like I had to do something risky, if only to be able to get a new pencil.  I conceived of what would be seen as an evil plot.

            The way I saw it was that if I got rid of my eraser-less pencil, Mrs. Roberts, our teacher, would give me a new one.  I wrapped up my old pencil and all other stubs of pencils in my desk in a piece of scratch paper and placed the bundle in the wastebasket by the teacher’s desk.  Then off to recess I went without a care.

            When we were all back in the classroom, my mouth dropped open; one of the boys in the class had noticed the bundle which had come loose with the pencils showing. 

“Mrs. Roberts!  Look at this!  Someone’s thrown away their pencils and there’s still enough lead to write!”

“Give that to me!” Mrs. Roberts, commanded.  The boy handed it over.  “Who did this? I want to know right now!” (Big scowl!)

The classroom was silent.  I was a frozen block of ice.

“I’m going to find out who is responsible for this!” the teacher promised.  She went to her desk and grabbed a notepad, tearing off the sheets one by one, glancing up at us every few sheets.  Then going to each person in the front of a row, she handed several sheets to be passed toward the back, “Now the person who did this can simply write their name and “yes” on the paper and that will be that!”  We did as we were told, but I never wrote a thing.

After reviewing her handy work and not finding what was expected, there was more grimacing.  My heart was beating fast, and my hands began to sweat.  There was no way I was going to admit to this act, which in my mind was no crime at all; but only a way to obey instructions to hand in neat papers!  It was the stupid rule that should be on trial, not me; but, having grown up with the maxim that children were to be seen and not heard, it never occurred to me to defend myself.

Finally, “No one is going to be allowed to leave this room until someone admits to this!”

That did it; I was caught now.  The buses wouldn’t wait for the country kids, and my budding morality told me it wasn’t fair for me to keep them when I was the guilty party.  I would have to sacrifice myself.

“Put your heads down on your desk, and the person who did this, put up your hand. This is your last chance!”

I did.  Turbulent feelings of shame, rage, fear, freeze, all the victim feelings I’d been learning at the family dinner table emerged and threatened to swallow me.  The rest of the day is a blank.  One thing I learned—your sins will find you out.

That night at dinner, I was very quiet.  Dad had gotten home late, having stopped at his favorite watering hole after closing the store.  Mom had been waiting, ready to unleash a torrent of disgust at his behavior.  Before he arrived she’d been punctuating the air like hornets hovering over a piece of raw meat, “Where is that man!  He’s probably at the bar!  Why can’t he ever get home on time?”  Now with him finally home, smiling and smelling of beer, she lit into him.

“Don’t you think the rest of us are hungry?  Don’t you care?  Why do you have to go to that bar anyway?”  Her tone of voice said, “You’re disgusting!”  Dad batted her words back to her, “Thoughtless?  You’re the one who can’t ever give me credit for all the work I do around here! I’d call that thoughtless. If you’re so hungry, where’s the dinner? Let’s get this show on the road!”

            I cringed on the inside, making myself small and hopefully unnoticed, hardly daring to breathe as their blaming and shaming grew to a white-hot heat.  Somehow I chocked down some food and left the table as soon as my plate was empty. I sought the refuge of my bedroom and a Nancy Drew mystery.

            After dinner, Mom called me downstairs for the nightly ritual of preparing my hair for school the next day.  Pin curls were the “in thing.”  Mom would comb out a portion of hair, dip her fingers in a bowl of water and wet that hair before wrapping it around her finger, smoothing it to my head, and anchoring it with two bobby pins.  I would turn as she finished each section until my whole head was covered.

            “Quit wiggling! Can’t you sit still?” Every curl was punctuated with some objection, the water from her fingers dripping in my eyes, over my cheeks, down my neck.  My chest got tighter and tighter as I tried to keep my own resentments to myself, not daring to protest lest the exclamations increase.  When I was old enough to take the project on myself, I felt relieved, relieved, but also insecure because I couldn’t do it as well as she did for a while, and there was no one to blame but myself.  I was experiencing the beginning tremors of the pull to be independent and still be protected.

            By the time I was ten years old, home life was becoming more intense.  I was considered old enough to babysit Susan, age 6 and Steven, age 4.  This was particularly necessary on Saturday evenings because the help at The Minden Dry Goods was off for the night, and mom and dad worked from  6 pm to 9 pm together.  They were just two blocks and a phone call away.  My job was to see that my siblings got their Saturday night bath and were ready for bed by the time my parents got home.  My pay for this immense challenge was comic books—Little Lulu (especially the big 25 cents issue with Witch Hazel), all the Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck comics, Andy Panda, Bugs Bunny and others.

            One loathsome Saturday night, neither Susan nor Steven would pay the least attention to my invitations to the bath.  Finally I got so frustrated, feeling caught between what was expected by my parents and what was possible, rage burst out of me, and I began pounding on the backs of my siblings, yelling and screaming for them to get into “that tub!”  Since I was a tiny thing, their reaction to me was the brush off.  I was no more than a pesky mosquito to them.  I knew I’d crossed a line anyway, and even though no parental discipline materialized—the kids never talked—I was forever marked.  I knew myself to be a “wild thing.”

            To my mother’s relief and my dismay, my boy friend, Larry, announced he and his family were moving away.  I was devastated.  On an outing to Wally Hot Springs that night, where our parents took us to wear us out so we would sleep, I floated face down in the pool all evening, weeping, crying my heart break out so no one would hear.  My first lost love.

            But summer vacation cured all ills.  The park in Minden was a block square with lush green lawn and a gazebo-like stage used for announcements on special celebrations like Carson Valley Days.  Every so often it would be flooded to water the lawn, and I and my friends would run through the warm, two-to three inch water, splashing to our hearts delight.  I could feel my smile running across my face, my heart leaping in my chest as I ran and danced and splattered in ecstasy, my girl friends at my side, all of us shouting and racing back and forth.  Only our parents worried about polio which did not yet have a cure.

            On Carson Valley Day, everyone who had a horse, a tractor, certain farm machinery, and every city vehicle would be paraded down the main street in front of The Minden Dry Goods where our family always watched.  My mom’s women’s group, Fortnightly, would dress in crazy outfits and have some kind of float or truck or strange vehicle, and drive wildly, shouting and laughing down the street, breaking out of any traditional role and just being obnoxious in a totally charming way.

            The lunch was amazing in the fifties—tender, pit-cooked beef with home made beans and cottage cheese.  We stood in line forever to get ours, then run home and eat our prize on the front lawn.  I remember the joy of not eating venison and the amazingly delicious taste of beef.  As a hunter, Dad went on several deer hunts a year, and our enormous chest freezer held the bounty.  To him we were the most fortunate of children, to have fresh wild game for dinner every night.  To me it was something to remedy with a healthy dose of my grandfather’s favorite—Heinz Ketchup.  This could be an offense…or not…depending on Dad’s condition when he came home for dinner.

            One night as the shaming and blaming took on a new intensity, I mentally drew an imaginary hood over my head to block it out.  It felt like a battle field with hidden land mines that could go off at any moment.  Mom looked with disgust at my venison, potato and ketchup concoction. “Do you have to make us all sick with that mess?”  Dad reached over and thonked me on the head with his thumb and middle finger, brows furrowed and teeth clenched in annoyance.  Oh! Oh! Tears coming!

            I jumped up and rushed out to my room.  There I found peace, quiet and buried myself in a new Nancy Drew mystery.  Nobody followed.  Nobody insisted I return to the table.  I didn’t care that I was still hungry, even if it wasn’t my favorite dinner.  “I’ll never do that to my children.”  Today I often bite my tongue rather than say something I’ll regret, but now and then I can’t help acting out the same way my parents did.  Creative Love isn’t finished with me yet.

Spinning My Cacoon

Chapter 4

I sought out my own moments of quiet joy when the weather cooperated, which was often. The blue skies of the high desert are visible over ninety per cent of the time, and these skies were my skies. If I couldn’t find a friend in the neighborhood to play with, I’d head for my “forbidden land,” a fenced off area that protected the old V&T train’s railroad tracks through a swampy farm region. I had to cross highway 395 south through Minden to get there, and in the fifties there were transients who hid out in the area. Mom warned me not to go there because a “tramp” could get me.

            The V&T line was the Virginia and Truckee Railroad which was built to transport freight to and from Virginia City during the Comstock Lode. One branch went to Minden, and when the line closed in 1950, they barbed-wired the old track across the highway and behind my house.  It was my second paradise, my hidden garden like my Grandmother’s rose garden, but even better in some ways.

            With the sun hot on my bare arms, I’d grab a baseball cap and sneak over to climb under the barbed wire and saunter toward the old bridge. The sultry, fermented smell of the swamp with its cattails taller than me lent an air of jungle adventure to my lair. The warbling of the red-winged blackbirds and yodel of the meadow larks were my wild things in this enchanted land. Alone but not lonely was where I felt safest, happiest, and I found these nurturing surroundings my new sacred place. When I was alone, in worlds of my own making, I could escape that sense of anxiety that had its own life, and instead feel of one piece.

            As I was soaking up the atmosphere one July day, I heard a sudden crash, louder than an animal would make, and my mother’s words, “A tramp will get you!” burst in my brain. No two feet ever ran faster that day, and whatever it was, I outran it.  But I would go back.  This blue-sky-bird-song heaven was more precious than anything--my Great Mother--home away from home. 

            After school one day, I told my mom about my loose tooth.  This was as important to me at the time as learning to drive would be when I was sixteen.  Mom’s eyes opened wide, barely believing that her oldest could be making this life passage.  I opened my mouth for her to test the tooth.  It wiggled.  Every day or two she checked to see if it was still there.  Finally, when it was hanging by a thread, she began to obsess that I would swallow it, choke and die. She enlisted my dad to pluck the offending projection.  So, when he arrived home that evening, he convinced me to let him put a string around the thing and pull it out, “Don’t you want the tooth fairy to bring you money?” he coaxed.  Being naturally compliant, I opened up. Yank!  “Ooops!” The string pulled off the tooth, and blood began to run down my chin. That was it! I commenced my escape, dashing into the living room.  With my mom looking horrified, Dad, determined to get the job done, and headed after me. 

Now you have to understand something about my dad.  He is going to have his way.  When he got a new hunting dog, Duke, and spent months training him, then took him out on his first expedition. That dog was going to retrieve.  I know this because of a local news paper story.  Dad gunned down three ducks, and they landed in the water.  He commanded Duke to retrieve.  Duke looked at him and wagged his tail.  Dad, in wading boots, took the dog out into the water as far as he could, pointed Duke in the direction of the ducks and again gave the orders.  Duke headed back to shore as fast as he could.  Dad followed, stripped off his clothes, tied a rope to Duke’s collar, and began swimming out to the ducks, towing the dog.  When they arrived at the ducks, and Dad again issued the command, Duke got the idea and he obeyed.

So you can guess what happened with my tooth.  Our house was arranged so you could run a circuit through the living room, down the hall, into the wash room, then the kitchen and back through the living room.  With me tearing up the carpet and Dad fast on my heels, it wasn’t long before I was pinned under him in receipt of the command, “Open your mouth!”  Now when you’re a six year old, small at that, and someone that appears to be twenty feet tall is right in your face, you don’t argue.  Out came the tooth.  That was the last time anyone knew I had a wobbly denticle until I held it in my hand.

As I look back on that today, I realize how I dissociated from my body and like a ripe caterpillar, spun a cocoon of defenses, and moved in.  I withdrew into the worlds of literature and nature, and close friends, places of safety and silence, often places of aloneness but not loneliness.  The cocoon shut out all unpleasantness, but it shut out love too.  I became an orphan by virtue of my self-protective creation.  But I put a nice smile on my cocoon; along with some nice little tap shoes so I could dance to anybody’s tune when asked.  I even became an orphan to my own true self.  But the Creative Love which birthed me wasn’t finished with me yet.  And my parents, whom I’d suspected of being aliens, proved it to me that day.

And yet I was loved…loved by aliens.  On a cloudy winter morning, right in the middle of first grade, snow began falling.  They were the big flakes, as big as my little nose, and they piled up and up and up until by early afternoon there were six inches of snow on the ground.  Bus drivers were called to come and pick us up and take us home.    Any unfamiliar routine often provoked alarm in me, and when a teacher hustled me onto a bus I didn’t recognize, I wondered where I would be delivered.  Noticing my classmate, Leola, a farm child, in a front row seat, I assumed I would be taken out in the country and then what?  When you’re wearing a cocoon, you don’t ask questions.  You just try to solve your own problems with whatever know-how you can muster.

The bus approached the intersection which led to The Minden Dry Goods, and I snuck up to the driver and in my father’s best voice, commanded him. “Stop here. I have to get off now!”  He did.  Now when you’re wearing little white shoes and little white socks and a cotton dress and a light-weight coat, there’s a lot of bare leg exposed to all that cold snow.  The walk home was memorable, as my calves turned into bright blue icicles.  The pain was piercing.  It was four, very, very long blocks before I saw my mother peeking her head out the door and urging me inside.  Her remedy for numbness was to put me into cool water (not warm, but cool), but then what can you expect from aliens.  Nevertheless, she was there and she cared.  You just had to look for it a little harder sometimes.

Increasing Awareness

Chapter 6

            It never occurred to me as a child that I had choices.  Mom decided everything for me, and I simply accepted that this was the way of things.  One of her ideas was to get me some musical training.  My first piano teacher was Mrs. Doane, a pink-cheeked, happy lady, who thought I was wonderful.  She gave me my first book songs.  I warmed to her enthusiastic encouragement and memorized all my pieces for her with keen determination.  I excelled for the short time I knew her.  Because she was expecting her first child, she decided to give up teaching, and Mom went in search of a new instructor.

            I was soon introduced to the New Woman from the Big City, who came out once a week to give lessons.  She was as starched as Mrs. Doane was lithe.  There was no personal touch in her style of teaching.  I think she hated doing it.  She was strict and uncaring.  Lessons began to be a dreary experience, and I put off practicing as much as possible.  This led to failure week after week under this Miss Strang. My shoulders sagged in a depressed kind of defeat each time I reluctantly showed up for the next lesson. I told my mom I didn’t want to do it anymore, but my words evaporated before they ever got to my mother’s ears.

            Soon Miss Strang had us all in line to perform in our first recital.  I knew my piece backwards and forwards and even looked forward to showing off a bit when the time came.  However, the week before the recital, Miss Strang gave my piece to another girl, and gave me a new one.  There wasn’t enough time for me to learn it, and when the recital came and I was called on, I marched to my impending doom, knowing I was going to fail.  It seemed that I made ten thousand mistakes.  When I finished, I couldn’t lift my head, but stood by the piano while people politely clapped for me.  I made a hasty exit feeling shamed, angry, disgusted and heartbroken.

            After that, I couldn’t bring myself to attend any more lessons from Miss Strang.  My mother was deaf to my pleas to stop this misery, so I took matters into my own hands.  I’d learned about paper cuts working with certain class papers, and when no one was watching, I slit my fingers just under the fingernail with my homework.  This caused the nail bed to fill with blood.  When I showed up at my lesson, I told Miss Strang I hurt my fingers playing soccer, and I couldn’t have a lesson. Mother must have gotten the message, that her dream of me playing piano at parties simply was not going to materialize, and I was liberated at last.  How easy it can be to some parents to dismiss the discomfort of a child, insisting on behavior that is counter-productive.  I still struggle with nerves to face the public and perform, although I’ve been a teacher most of my life.

            Summer would sooth over any disillusionment, and soon I my friend, Noreen and I were chatting on the old lawn swing just outside our back door.  We wasted away a long, hot afternoon, our “to and fro's” causing the swing to protest with rasping scrapes and cranky squeaks.  It must have been a Sunday afternoon when Dad was not at work, because suddenly he was standing at the battered, screen door yelling at us, “Cut out that noise!  I’m trying to sleep!”  If his unexpected appearance wasn’t enough, he was standing in his underwear with his private parts hanging out the left side of one leg.  I froze.  I don’t know what Noreen thought.  I felt like we were tumbling down Alice’s rabbit hole with no end in sight.  The only coping mechanism I had then was to pretend the whole thing never happened.  Children in alcoholic homes become expert at pretending.  I just sealed the whole thing off in a deep, dark inner room. It never happened.

            Later that summer when I was somewhere around ten or twelve, Mom and Dad enlisted me to fill in for a lady who couldn’t make the square dancing practice at my Aunt Marie’s and Uncle Lin’s next door.  I was dressed in a fresh outfit, a dress with a full skirt, all clean and starched.  Feeling excited and looking forward to the fun, we ran down the alley behind our house and into their backyard.  I remember the music, the words of the caller, the “do-see-dos,” the “allemande lefts,” and “promenade homes.”  My feet never touched the ground, my head in the clouds.  I was a princess at a country-style ball, never missing a beat, belonging, welcomed, having the time of my life.

            In the fall, after the first freeze, our parents would put paper bags, old kettles and rags in the trunk of the car and pile us kids in for an adventure in the pine nut hills south of town. I loved being outdoors with the astringent smell of the pines, the dusty scent of the sage-brush air, the crunch of pine needles underneath my feet and being able to go off by myself. We’d bump along dusty, dirt roads, coughing all the way, taking a left fork here a right fork there until we were out in the middle of the high desert forest.  Stopping the car, we leapt out, grabbed our bags, and ran off to search out the pine nuts that had fallen from the trees.  I liked the nuts raw or roasted, so a good half of all I found went immediately into my mouth.

            Sometimes we picked up the green cones themselves, stuffed with nuts and full of pitch, which blackened our hands and clothes.  Mom and Dad were the ones who actually got enough pine nuts to take home.  Some of the nuts were last year’s and hollow, and would float to the top when Mom washed them in an old pot later.  The nuts would be boiled briefly then roasted with salt in the oven.  Because of the pitch, the same pans were used every year so our every day pots were kept nice.

            One Tuesday it was Mom’s turn to have her bridge group over.  My brother, sister and I were all enlisted to get the house in perfect shape—window washing, dusting, vacuuming, curtains taken down, washed and ironed, bathroom (just one for the five of us) polished and shinning.  It wasn’t the work so much that we hated, but the constant finding fault with everything we did, the yelling, the disgust thrown our way, “Do I have to redo everything you’ve done?  Can’t you do it right for once?  I’ve told you a thousand times…!”  We breathed a sigh of relief when Mom finally let us take off.

            That night, as I lay in bed just down the hall from the festivities, I heard Mom telling her friends my secrets, things I’d shared with her in confidence.  Freezing was getting to be one of my normal states, and I punctually became an icicle.  I spent the night increasing the size and thickness of my cocoon, insulating myself from further betrayal, but also building up greater defenses toward love itself.

            Also overheard that night was Mom talking to someone about Diane’s mother.  Diane and I were constant companions.  Words like, “lost her mind,” “that female operation,” were tossed around.  And, the next day, I was told to be very quiet when I went to get Diane to play.  I had a kind of feeling that something very sad and mysterious and dark was taking place in that house.  Year’s later when I had “that operation,” I would understand about hormone imbalance, but at the time, it was a dark, shameful mystery.

            One warm fall morning before school, Dad grabbed two fishing poles, “ Get yourself into the car.  I’m going to teach you how to fly fish!”  This was a first. Curious and feeling pleased to be singled out from my brother and sister, to be asked to do something with Dad, just the two of us; I bounded out to the car and hopped in. It only took fifteen or twenty minutes to get to the west fork of the Carson River.  I took to my lessons like a pro, casting the line out from the low railed bridge and making the fly skip on the water back to me.  I felt elated when an eight-inch trout broke the water tugging on my line. I pulled in a nice trout. Dad showed me how to clean it.  I wasn’t bothered a bit by the blood and guts, focusing more on not slitting my own hands. I was very impressed with the way my dad handled his knife. We took several fish home for Mom to fry up for breakfast.  It was my first newly-landed trout from a fresh water river, and my mouth watered with anticipation. That rainbow tasted better than any food I’d ever eaten.

           

Chapter 3—Turning My Own Pages

The store continued to do well, and we moved into our own home in Minden, just a couple of blocks from the Minden Dry Goods on the main street. To a five year old, it looked like a castle.  Peach colored stucco with two stories, both of which we lived in.  There were white birches in the front, a large lawn and sidewalks to roller skate on.  Within months of the move, November, 1948, a new baby arrived—Steven.

Just two months earlier, I was six years old and was introduced to public school.  How favored I was to have a carbon copy of Tavie Howard in my first teacher, Mrs. Booth, another warm, loving and nurturing woman, and added to that a good sense of humor. Even when a child had an accident and pee ran down the isle, there were no reprisals, and everything was handled quietly.  I fell in love with school forever.

And then there were the recesses. The front of the school had large, dirt playgrounds.  They were perfect for outlining rooms of our “houses” in which we played together.  One of us would be the mother, and if Johnny Nelson was playing, he would be the father.  The rest of us would be the children.  If you were the parent you got to boss everyone else about.  Part of being a “dirt-housewife” meant you had to sweep up.  We would break off a small, lower branch of an arborvitae next to the school building and use it as a broom to sweep the dirt until there were no rocks or sticks showing.  I remember having a sense of determination and delight in whipping that little broom back and forth over the outlined space until another game was announced by one of the more assertive girls.

We might play hide and seek or “Mother may I?", or jacks with its onesies and twosies.  But the most fun was playing cowboys and horses.  All the girls wore cotton dresses to school, and each dress had a tie-belt in the back.  When the belt was untied, one on either side of the dress, they made for perfect reins.  Each boy would select a girl, grab her sashes and off they’d race through the grass at the back of the school yelling at the top of their lungs.  Larry Taylor, my “cursing instructor,” and I were always Roy Rogers and Trigger. (I love palominos to this day.)  It was exhilarating to gallop and prance and race for all we were worth.  However, when I arrived home with one or the other piece of belt in my hand, my frazzled mother, home with a baby and toddler, would heave a sigh of disgust, “You have no respect for the clothes on your back!  Don’t you know these cost money?  Don’t you know they have to be washed and ironed?  Don’t you realize how much work it is for me to keep you looking good, and this is how you repay me!” I’d cringe and freeze until she took a breath, then dash upstairs to change into my play clothes.

During one particularly heated game of hide and seek, I went charging up the school stairs to the “free” wall, and for some reason collided head on with it, knocking myself out.  I woke up in the “time-out” room with a woman pressing a cold, dinner knife against the great lump on my head.  This did nothing to help.  I can only assume she thought the coldness would help reduce the swelling.  This fabricated first-aid had to be where my disillusionment with institutions began.

One morning when I should have been getting up for first grade, my fingers were swollen and itchy with a red, bumpy rash, and a terrible pain in my head wouldn’t let me stand.  Being a child, and even though six years old, I simply did the next best thing and crawled down the stairs and into my parent’s bedroom.  I showed mother my hands, and cried about my headache.  Alarmed, she immediately called our country doctor, Dr. Hand who often forgot to charge for his services and also still made house calls.  He diagnosed me with Scarlet Fever, a dread disease at the time because fatalities occurred as there were no antibiotics.  First I had to be isolated from my sister, Susan, now two-something and my brother, Steve, a baby.  My father, Ken, was told to leave the house so he could keep working, and he moved in with his sister and brother-in-law next door, co-owners of our retail store.

We were all quarantined.  Fun for Mom and Dad?  I don’t think so.  They would talk through the kitchen window over the sink.  Dad would bring groceries or whatever was needed for the day, and there was Mom with a six-year-old with a serious illness,  and a two-year-old and a baby in her bedroom she was trying to keep safe.

 Then my sister, came down with the disease, and was placed in my brother’s bedroom downstairs to make it easier for mother to care for her. She had to be kept quiet in her crib.  My brother was isolated in Mother’s bedroom with the hope of keeping him from getting sick.  I was kept on a cot in the kitchen and not allowed to move.  For some reason we had to be kept as still as possible.  This meant six weeks of quarantine, six weeks of living on a cot in the kitchen and no school—I had just started first grade in the fall. I look back on it now and realize that many of the reading assignments and worksheets which kept me occupied on that cot must have been an attempt to keep me learning with the rest of my classmates. The best part of the disease was pulling off the dead skin cells after a while.  I must have looked like a moth-eaten beastie. I suspect Scarlet Fever weakened my immune system for future bouts of sickness, preparing me for long stretches of isolation and inactivity.  Reading would be my escape.  This love of reading is the wonderful gift my mother gave me.

            Dad was in most ways an absent father. He worked. He hung out at his favorite tavern. He worked. He slept. When he came home to dinner and headed the table in what seemed to me at the time, like an army sergeant, Mom heaped bitter complaints of his lateness on him.  Our dinner atmosphere was always tense.  When I try to remember my dad, I picture him behind the counter or at the antique cash register at the Minden Dry Goods or with bills laid out across the living room floor on a Sunday as he tried to decide which he could pay and which had to wait. On his rare days off, I remember his bringing home fish, game birds, deer and other prizes for our dinner.

Mom was good at dodge ball. She managed to stand between us and Dad when he’d “had a bit too much,” but her frustrations landed on us when we didn’t measure up to her perfect standards. She could find the tiniest bit of food left on a plate we’d washed, and then our ears would burn as she went on incessantly about our ineptitude and stupidity. 

And yet we were loved. Mom was a voracious reader, and encouraged us in every way to imitate her. By nine o’ clock, she would hustle Sue and me up the steep, shiny-brown wooden stairs to our bedroom under the eves. The knotty pine walls and the sloping ceiling gave us a sense of being in a tree house, and we scrawled our own graffiti into the wood above our beds making the space our own. Mom would sit in a chair at the foot of our beds and read to us books her mother had read to her, Honey bunch, The Bobsey Twins, The Burgess Stories of animals that talked, and later on the series of Oz books and Nancy Drew. I think she enjoyed revisiting the stories of her childhood with us. These were rare and wonderful moments of calm and happiness. The stories helped me realize I wasn’t the only one upon whom discipline might descend suddenly like a hawk on a mouse.

One of the early highlights of my life was learning to read.  I couldn’t put a book down once I’d started it.  Mom would yell up the stairs, “Nancy, get that light off!”  I complained to my grandfather one day, and he conspired to make me a special reading light which had two chains to pull, one to dim the light and one to brighten it.  I could dim it when Mom called up; and, when I heard her steps going away, pull the chain down just enough to be able to see.

In the winter, the oil stove downstairs sent very little heat up, and so we had mounds of quilts to keep us warm. My favorite amenity was the chrome hot water bottle in a blue-blanket cover placed in the bed before we hopped in. The sheets felt icy, but there in the middle of the bed was this haven for cold feet.

In the summer Dad would hook up the hose to the swamp cooler in our bedroom window.  The chilled air would blast its full power over our beds and flow down the stairs to give the house a bit of relief on those hottest of days which could get up in the high nineties, even higher.

There was one great and terrible disadvantage to having our bedrooms upstairs—no bathroom.  Enter the White-Enamel-With-Red-Rim-Receptacle-With-Cover for our pee, just big enough for a child’s bottom and deep enough to hold a good yellow gallon.  When it was introduced, I, as the oldest, was assigned the daily emptying.  I could put it off for days, until my mother questioned me about my duty.  By then it could be nearly full, reeking and heavy.  How I negotiated those slippery, varnished stairs without ever spilling a drop amazes me today.

But those stairs could also be a source of noisy delight when my new friends, Cookie and Sheila came to play.  Their steepness made a wonderful slide, as we would toboggan down them with blankets, pillows or just the seat of our pants, whooping and hollering at each bump so we sounded like a gigantic truck trying to start. Ahh!...Ahh!...Ahh!...Ahh!...Ahh!