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!

Aliens, Possibly Aliens

Thanks for all the feedback on Chapter 1. I'm going to keep all your suggestions and implement them when I complete this first draft and start the second.  So please keep those suggestions coming. Don't think I'm not paying attention if I don't implement your ideas immediately. My current goal is simply to get the whole story down from beginning to end in the coming months. When that's done, I'll begin the "crafting phase" when all your suggestions will help a lot!

Chapter 2 – Aliens, Possibly Aliens

My father’s return from the army in March of 1946 brought about my departure from all I knew, loved and belonged to. I now had a father I didn’t remember, my mother had changed dramatically—pregnant with my sister. My sheltering, nurturing grandparents disappeared in a puff of smoke from our car’s exhaust, and nothing looked familiar—no rose garden, no swing, no sandbox, no old kitchen wood stove, no Catalpa tree, no apples, and no chocolate pudding skins. But my curiosity was still with me, and it wouldn’t take long to get into a mess.

In order to find the messes I could get into, we moved into a remodeled chicken coop between the country towns of Gardnerville and Minden—Tietjeville--just 50 miles south of Reno. There I met my first boyfriend, Larry Taylor, a little devil disguised as a blond, smiling cherub. He taught me to swear. I can guess what words he taught me, and before I knew it I was plunked down in our dark, spider-webbed wood shed, the offending words washed from my mouth with Lifebuoy deodorant soap. I began to suspect that my parents were aliens, and this was a very foreign land. Thus began a multitude of experiences where I was just “being myself,” and then ended up in trouble.

While I was being a pest, my grandfather was helping finance a down payment on our family’s retail store called The Minden Dry Goods, and on July 1, 1946, it opened. The shelves were stocked with men’s, women’s and children’s clothes, all kinds of shoes and boots, toys, jewelry, notions, yardage and lingerie. It’s hard for me to imagine how my dad was able to accomplish this only four months after returning from the war. His sister, Marie and her husband, Lin, already living in Minden and aware of the store for sale, were part of the plan, so that must have helped.

The store would take all of my dad’s time and a lot of my mother’s. As I think about the store today, I imagine it as a wonderful enterprise. The owners were always on the premises taking customers’ interests to heart. Mom studied fashion magazines so when they went on buying trips to San Francisco, she could bring back the latest styles to our country town. Dad knew all the background of every item, explaining the wonder of some blouse’s material. He could sell the moon to any Scrooge.

My next jam involved a Rotary picnic at Lake Tahoe. My father, who had a taste for hops, spent some hours with me and his cronies in one of the tents erected for their meetings. Somehow he and his buddies (who knows where my mother was) vacated the tent, leaving my four-year-old self to my own reflections. Being thirsty, and finding many almost-empty beer bottles around within easy reach, I simply helped myself to whatever foam had settled to the bottom. At some point I passed out and was taken home in the back of our old Plymouth, the one with running boards that I could hop on and hold onto the windowsill while my dad slowly crept down our street. My inclination to fill my mouth with whatever was handy must have begun then. This time there were only guilty looks between my parents, and I escaped any discipline.

Looking back on the casual way I was raised, I can see a growing sense of a lack of security building in me. In my home, life often seemed out of control, and it wasn’t long before I began to take up the slack, learning from my mother how to be a “controller.”  Over the years I would learn to be god of my own life, but not an all-powerful one.

To be good community members, my parents joined the local Methodist Church. The meaning of life began to make itself known to me in that small, white wood frame building located in the 1940’s in Gardnerville at the south end of town. A gentle, older woman kept us children occupied while our parents attended the services. Tavie Howard was this first official face of God to me—a nurturing kindness, tenderness and sweetness, and the source of fun and games. Before View-Masters and 3-D movies, there was the Stereo-scope which I looked into and found a flat photo suddenly transformed into a 3-D experience. Although my philosophy of faith received no illumination, the fact that church meant Tavie, love and some excitement were enough to fertilize my budding interest in attendance.

As The Minden Dry Goods began making money, we moved into the downstairs of a large rental house just in front of our old one. Other people lived upstairs.  And it wasn’t long before my mother brought a new sister home, Susan.  I did my best to ignore this helpless creation, unless I was harnessed to hold a bottle for her while Mom fixed dinner.

            Larry and I continued our misadventures, catching crawdads in the irrigation ditch which ran into a sheep pasture nearby. Of course we had to climb through the barbed wire fence to play with the sheep, tearing our clothes. Coming home from my sheep-hugging adventure the first time, I shocked my mother with half-closed eyes and red welts all over me. I was allergic to sheep.  Who knew.

            To dissuade me from mishaps with Larry, Mom invited a little red-haired girl named Georgia over to play. My first look at her told me she was foreign, with a large red birthmark over her cheek and chin. I was sure she had some kind of disease, and, when left alone together in the play room to do whatever we wanted, I locked her in the closet and took off to find Larry. Just being myself. Another surprise punishment ensued without a clue to me of what my sin was. Withdrawal and separation became my pattern when I encountered new and uncomfortable situations in my life.

Battle Born

I would love your help....

With the New Year, I begin my autobiography in first draft form.  There will probably be mistakes in grammar and spelling.  Please feel free to point them out.  There will also be chapters of little interest to you.  Let me know why. If they don't interest you, they probably won't interest others.  Hopefully, there will be incidents that help you remember your own special moments or that touch you in some way.  Let me know that too.  Thank you for your participation in making my coming book worthwhile.

Chapter 1 – Battle Born (Opening paragraphs only)

A river runs through my birth place. The river has “rills,” and not just any rills, but “silvery rills” according to “Home Means Nevada,” our state song. This is my hallowed ground, my sacred space, Reno, Nevada, whose history of divorce and gambling might lead you to believe it is anything but holy. Not so! Love covers a multitude of sins, and it was love that birthed me in this place…actually two kinds of love…the Creative Love of a power greater than myself, and a more convoluted, earthier kind of love, my parents’ love, complicated by conflicting desires and self-motivations, and yet it was still love.

*****

Trying to re-orient myself and find out “who I am now,” no career to define me, no children to raise, no one’s time clock to meet except my own, I spent the morning with my sister, Susan, going through newspaper clippings and hand scrawled notes about our family and its roots. We kept thrusting what we found under each other’s noses, “Look at this!  Can you believe that?!”

Gradually, little by little, but steadily, a new and stunning truth began to grip me. It was like walking through a tunnel and coming out the other side to see the glory of the ocean. A whole lot of people had to be born, fall in love or be thrust together, and have children over hundreds of years, had to pick up their lives and possessions and move thousands of miles (some even had to die) in order for me to be born in Reno, Nevada.  Surprisingly, this knowledge boosts my morale and helps counter those “Sweeties” I get at the grocery store from the checker who sees the gray hair and the wrinkles I’ve accumulated over the years in this dry, high-desert climate.

            The five major family lines, with stories, that have come down to me are woven into my ancestry—the Palmers, Stanleys, Munks, Watsons and Fishers. The Palmer line has a certain distinguishing feature that didn’t get promoted by the time it got to me.  No one ever bragged about this fact, but with my Ultimate End approaching all too rapidly, it gives me something of interest to pull about me like a cloak, kind of providing a buffer between me and the Deep Sleep—the remarkable truth that my roots go back to the Mayflower!  I know this from a scrap of paper my sister and I ran across the day we dug through our archives.

A New Perspective

        Sherry called and asked if I’d like to help out with the care of my friend, Flo, whose brain tumor’s growth now paralyzed her right side. Sherry was putting together a list of people who could come in and sit with Flo.  I swallowed twice, cleared my tightening throat, and said, “Sure, when do you want me?”  Flo and her husband Don seemed really old to me at the time, but they were probably only in their fifties.  They had made it their personal mission to help street kids and had a Gospel Mission down town which Don needed to tend

  

 “I’ll put you down for the lunch hour on Thursdays if that’s okay. Come about 11:00 and the next person will be there at 3:00.  I’ve got the shift just before you, and I’ll have lunch prepared.  All you’ll have to do is take it out of the refrigerator and help Flo if necessary,” Sherry instructed.

“No problem,” I said, “I’ll see you then.”

            I hung up the phone, looked around the now-quiet kitchen, cluttered with breakfast dishes, cereal boxes, milk, the ordinariness of my housewife’s life, and swallowed the lump in my throat.  Whew!  You never knew what curve balls life would throw, and whether you’d be up for catching them. I made a note on my calendar to show up at Flo’s at 11 am next Thursday.

            At 10:45 that day I left the house and headed north on West Seventh to Don and Flo’s.  I punched in my favorite station and caught the end of “Annie’s Song” by John Denver.  My thoughts floated on the notes trying to imagine what I was going to say to Flo.  What do you say to someone holding her ticket out of this life?  What did I know about it anyway?  Nothing!  The only thing I’d had to deal with was my mood swings around "that time of the month."  Why couldn’t I have the faith to move this mountain and have Flo leap out of bed and dance?  How did Jesus do that anyway?  The song ended with me lost in my own wonderings.

            Ten minutes later I pulled up in front of their home, much like my own, "little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky."  Only the house number, if readable, could guide anyone wanting to find you.  I was surprised when Don opened the door.  His rotund frame and crew cut, his ear-to-ear smile disarmed me; and I walked happily into his welcoming arms.  “Hey, how’s it going?” he asked, as he patted me on the back.

 “Oh, can’t complain,” I beamed.  Don had a way of banishing all my insecurities.  “Come in and give Flo a hug,” he commanded.

            Not having seen her for weeks, I wasn’t prepared to find my Big Momma lying in a hospital bed in her kitchen wearing a post-surgery butch haircut.  I didn’t want to act weird, but I froze...tears formed...throat blocked...breath stopped.  Big Momma was dying and I was here to help her negotiate the passage for four hours every Thursday.  I suddenly got it.  

          Thank God for automatic functions!  My lungs kicked in and breath entered, defrosting and grounding my body in the present moment.  I forced a smile, walked over to Flo, bent down and put my cheek next to hers, whispering, “Hi.”  I didn’t trust my voice and told myself she didn’t need a “Gloomy Gus” for a companion.  “Jesus, you’re always getting me into these challenging places.  Help!” I sighed under my breath.”

            Flo was feeling fine on her Percodan and anti-depressant.  Naturally conversational, she began giving me updates on what was happening at the Mission. What a relief!  She hadn’t changed on the inside!  We chatted happily away, and before I knew it she asked for her lunch.  The local Sunny-side radio station was playing music appropriate for an office, all upbeat and light. 

“I thought you’d have the Christian station on,” I wondered out loud. 

“I don’t get the same feeling from their music,” Flo explained.  I wondered what she meant and made a mental note to check out the differences on the way home.

            After lunch, Flo napped.  I sat across from her in an overstuffed chair and read C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, an allegory of heaven and hell.  What a writer! I could feel the expansiveness of heaven and the sharp, isolation of hell. Lewis’ take on this counter-intuitive theology helped me as a feminist and modern woman relate to the Biblical concepts.

Before I knew it there were soft taps on the front door, and I rose to answer it.  Sherry greeted me and explained her earlier absence, “I didn’t come this morning, so I’m taking the last shift today. Hope that didn’t throw you. Next week, I’ll be here with you.  Flo’s son is getting married, and she’s asked me to bring her some dresses to try on.  It’ll take both of us.”  This will be interesting, I thought.  Life goes on; doesn’t matter if you’re dying of a brain tumor, you have to get a new dress for your son’s wedding.  Somehow this was encouraging to me, and it surprised me that I felt so hopeful leaving when I’d felt so Tin-Woodsman-like earlier.

            The next Thursday arrived before I knew it, and I once again rang the bell at the Holmes’ home for our grand adventure.  Sherry answered the bell, and in a matter-of-fact way ushered me to the kitchen.  There, across the hospital bed and across Flo were two queen-sized, floor length dresses in soft, shimmering knits.  Flo was grinning and I couldn’t help smiling myself.  “Well, finally you’re here!  I’ve been dying to model for you both!” she laughed.

 I wasn’t prepared for her humor.  “Doesn’t dying put a damper on things?” I asked myself.  Looking at Flo--one side paralyzed, her fuzzy, closely cropped head, her eyes shining with life--I couldn’t reconcile what I thought was reality with her relaxed and easy manner, even if she had good medication.

            Sherri and I pulled back her covers, and I climbed up on the bed to be on her left side, leaving Sherry standing next to the paralyzed side. 

           “Are you ready for this?” I looked at Flo. 

          “What do you think?” she smirked.

           “Where shall we start?” I asked Sherry. 

           “I’ll roll the dress up so just the neck opening is above her head, and then we’ll work it down from there.” 

           Okay, we got her head through easily enough. 

          “Flo, let Nancy roll you towards her, and I’ll see if we can pull this down over your other shoulder and put your arm in the sleeve,” Sherry directed.

           I bent over to take hold of Flo’s right shoulder and torso and pulled toward me.  It felt like five hundred pounds of dead weight.  Sherry pushed. I pulled. Flo ended up on her left side.  Sherry needed help with Flo’s arm.  As she pulled the dress down and I pushed the limp arm into the sleeve, I lost my balance and fell across Flo; she rolled back onto her back.  The tension around needing to be so intimate with Flo’s crippled body broke, and we both began to laugh like a couple of crazies.  Sherry got caught up in our hilarity and doubled over with great guffaws.  The kitchen rocked with our glee.  Somehow we got both dresses on and off, and Flo chose the outfit she’d wear to the wedding, "the blue one."

            As I left that day I reflected on what Flo had taught me--not to fear the worst, to live fully in every minute we are given, to be grateful for drugs that help and not to hold too rigidly to all my natural remedies and organic foods, to listen to elevator music if that’s what helps you cope, and to be open and friendly to any caregivers that offer their loving kindness. Maybe dying isn’t the worst thing.  Maybe I can do it when I get my ticket. I just hope there will be the love for me that there was for Big Momma as I go.

Words from the Song of Songs according to Solomon rose to mind, “Place me as a seal over your heart, like a seal over your arm; for love is as strong as death, … it burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.  Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.  If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.”[1]

“Flo, pray for us.”

---

[1] Song of Songs 8:6-7, NIV 1982, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI

Flow-of-Consciousness to Crafting a Scene

Here is an example of two different approaches to writing the same scene.  The first is called “downloading,” which is a simple, flow-of-consciousness kind of writing, the kind I do when I’m just getting the memory down.  The second is more crafted--more action, more showing, less telling--but not finely edited.  The final version, if it survives editing, will pare down unnecessary portions.  Let me know how you experience each and which you prefer and why.  (Names have been changed to protect….)

Mid-life Crisis

As I pulled the autumn-colored quilt over our king-sized bed, I looked up at the shredding curtains behind it, sighed, wondering when Ken might be willing to budget a face-lift for the room.  The necessities headed his To Do list of bill paying, but clothes, home furnishings, personal items did not have his interest; my efforts to discuss them met with a grim expression.  I was grateful he provided the necessary things, but  didn’t feel I could ask for what he saw as extras being a stay-at-home mom with only a part-time job when I could get it  Still, the shabbiness of the bedroom deepened my the low grade depression.  Our kids, Sherrie and Tom, were in elementary school all day decreasing their need for me, and I’d just completed my term as President of Women's Aglow Fellowship. I missed leading this vital, faith-filled, supportive group of women like a newly blind man misses colors.

 * * * * * *

Our friends’ used, velvety sage green carpet, now ours, cushioned my steps as I entered the bedroom and walked over to our California king.  I reached down and lifted the edge of the quilt striped in an autumn rainbow of gold, green and orange.  No apologies.  It was the 70’s.  I pulled the quilt into place and plumped the pillows.  Would Ken ever give up his lumpy one?  And what about these drapes?  I reached behind the silky tangerine curtains, now shredded where the sun shone in each morning, and pulled the cords that drew them open.  Somehow new ones never got added to the budget over which he ruled.  I made a mental note to learn how to be more assertive.  Dust shedding from the disturbed curtains tickled my nose. Sneezing, I grabbed a Kleenex from the night stand and blew.

             If only I had a good job, my own money, I could get those drapes.  On the other hand, a job would work against my hours spent volunteering at the church and at Rebound, the ex-prisoners’ rehab center.  There was always the on-this-hand-but-then-on-the-other-hand thinking with me.  I could argue both sides on every issue and get stuck in the middle.  No action taken.   Lots of practice caring for others; little caring for myself.  No wonder I experienced this low grade depression.

            Reaching down to pick up Ken’s dirty underwear, I felt the angst of being a stay-at-home mom when the kids no longer needed a lot of attention.  From the day they started school, friends had replaced the fascination they found in my company, and if they weren’t playing with their buddies, they were watching TV.  I didn’t miss diapers and bottles, but I did miss the snuggling and play times together.

My volunteer work as President of Women's Aglow was over.  God I missed those women on my board, the close friendships, the prayer for each other as we shared our personal stories, the excitement of putting on a monthly meeting for the public with good food and an inspirational speaker, other women opening their hearts to the love of Christ.  I loved leading the praise and worship portion, banging my tambourine against my leg as the audience clapped and sang “I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me….”  It had been an exhilarating ride, but now someone else was president, and I needed to take a back seat.  I tossed his skivvies into the hamper.