THE LUCKIEST DAY OF MY LIFE

Skitch and her After-Bath-Snuggle-Buddy, Liam

THEN:   

The Luckiest Day of my Life or I Bless the day of the Cooked Foot


    On what was probably the luckiest or most blessed day of my entire life, I did not win the lottery or a trip to Hawaii. I didn't win anything that might make you think of me as lucky. In fact I was wounded pretty badly, but it remains in my heart the most blessed of all my days!

    It was the early 90s and I had one son that could not yet walk and one that I had to keep scraping off the walls because he walked everywhere, and climbed everywhere. I was still living with their dad at that time and things were tough in several ways, most noticeably they were financially tough. Both the adults in the home were unemployed, young, and therefore inexperienced. When my husband found a part time job or an odd job that he could do to earn a little money he often spent a significant portion of his earnings on alcohol. Like I said, I was young and inexperienced. A mountain woman my age would never put up with that!

    We were looking forward to our income tax return, planning to catch up on some bills and purchase some things we were in need of, including parts for a broken water heater. For several months I had been heating bath water on the stove and carrying it down the long hall of the mobile home we lived in. On this lucky day the check had finally arrived, but the check had nothing to do with the luck. In those days there were no instant refunds, so for a while I had nearly been bursting with the anticipation of getting the monkey off our back and the wolf away from the door. 

    When we found out the check had come, I called my parents and asked them if they could keep my two young sons, Cory and Liam, while my husband I went to pay bills and purchase the items on my list. My parents agreed; they were always happy to help with the boys. I had started heating water for my bath. The boys had been bathed before bed the night before, as was our custom, and I had already filled the tub up once for my husband to bathe a few hours earlier. 

    Cory was playing in the kitchen floor with Matchbox and Hotwheels cars. Liam was in his baby walker, pushing his way around, running over his brother's vehicles and frustrating Cory. Instinctively, I did what my mother had taught me to do when my nieces and nephew were little. I moved the kids from the kitchen because hot stuff was going to be transferred. I helped Cory gather his cars and, despite his pointing out that they do not roll very well on carpet, I moved his play to the living room, giving him a couple of large books to "drive" on. I pushed Liam into the living room as well, and dropped a broom down in his path so that he could not scoot his way back into the kitchen. 

    I then picked up my old kettle full of boiling water and turned around to take it through the hall. (If you took super hot water in there then you could add the cold from the spigot and it kept you from having to carry so much water from the stove.) As soon as I took the first step, the handle broke and boiling water landed on both my feet. My left one caught most of it. I had on the big slouch socks that were popular in those days, folded over at the top. When the water landed on my feet I was washed with a quick stab of agony and panic. I must tell you that, just a little, I urinated. For a second or two time stood still and I was caught in that land of fear and pain that I've visited more than I ever wanted to. I was smothered in the idea of "What now?" Then time picked up and moved normally again. I met my spouses eyes and they clearly said, "Uh oh! You are in big trouble!" My brain kicked in and demanded that I pull the socks off, but when it also whispered, "Your flesh may come with it." I grasped for the next best thing. I didn't think I could handle tearing off my own skin. My brain said "Cold water then!" I headed down the hall to the bathtub. My right foot was screaming in agony but the left one felt like it belonged to someone else. It felt like a stump that I could not control. I yanked it along and tried to not trip over it. 

    Once I made it to the tub, I put both feet, socks and all, in cold running water. I peeked under the sock on my right foot, pink skin that did not stick to the cloth. I removed that sock. I looked under the other one. The skin there was a scalded, angry red, but it too did not stick to the sock. I pulled off that sock as well. 

    My husband called my parents and told them what had happened. He said he wasn't sure, but maybe I needed to go to a hospital. My folks jumped in their vehicle and were there before I'd even moved out of the tub, because every time I pulled the right foot out of the trickle of cold water I had it under it started burning and I had to put it back. 

    While I was waiting - for my right foot to stop burning, for my left foot to start burning, for my parents to arrive, for evidence enough to make the decision about going to the hospital, for so much, and for nothing - I had time to think about what did happen and what might have happened.

    When my mother arrived, I told her, "Momma, thank you! Thank you so much for teaching me to keep kids out of the kitchen when you are messing with hot stuff! This could have happened to one or both of the boy's and it would have covered their whole little body!" When my sister's kids had visited, my mother had always insisted that they stay "out from under foot" when people were cooking. She had not allowed me to touch the stove until I was nearly an adult and then only for popcorn, or cornbread, or something terribly easy. I was an accident waiting to happen and she knew it. So, largely by example, she taught me that when you have kids in the house you never leave the kitchen with something cooking, you never cook on the front burners, and you keep all cords and stove knobs out of reach of little fingers. I had followed all those rules with my own children and, on this particular day, mother's rules had possibly saved their skin, maybe even their lives. 

    My right foot soon stopped burning enough for me to crawl out of the tub. I told my mom, "The right foot hurts but I know I got most of the water on the left foot." 

    She said, "Well, let's worry about the one that hurts. " That time she was wrong, and some nagging in the back of my head said, "Something is not right here. You know you injured that left foot more. Why isn't it hurting?"
    Soon, the pain eased off enough for me to put on a pair of sneakers, leave the boys with my parents, and go pay bills and run errands. While we were doing that a large water blister grew on top of my left foot. That night I slept with it out from under the covers, which I never do. Even in the heat of summer, I liked to at least have a sheet over my feet. The next morning I awoke to find that, despite my efforts to protect it, the blister had burst and the entire top of my foot was covered in raw meat. It was a nasty looking wound. I went to a doctor straight away and he told me. "If a pot handle is going to break when you're carrying boiling water you are best off to have shoes on. If you don't have shoes on, you should hope to have no socks. If you have socks on you should hope to think to pull those socks off as quickly as humanly possible after the water hits them. You wore your socks through the house to the tub and that entire time the heat they held onto was cooking your feet. You have first and second degree burns on the right foot. It will hurt for a while but will do okay without a doctors care. You have third degree burns on the left foot and it did not hurt because you killed the nerves in it. You need to come back to see me every day for thirty days and let me work on that foot. If you come back every day, and you do exactly as I tell you, you can probably keep it. Probably! It could still set in an infection that would force us to amputate the foot or even cause you to lose your life. You will certainly be scarred; you may need skin grafts. We will just have to wait and see."

    For thirty days, I made the trip to town with my foot bandaged up and a pair of awkward crutches under my arms. For thirty days, I settled onto a table and the doctor scrubbed my raw flesh with gauze while the nurse poured sterile water over it. The water came out of the jug clear and landed in the basin below a sickly pink. I would hold my breath and grit my teeth, as my daddy taught me to deal with pain, and I got through every session without weeping or calling out for mercy. I did sometimes ask (gasp) for a moment to catch my breath. Then back at it the three of us would go. I tried to keep enough sanity to pray. When my strength allowed, I used that time to thank the God I knew and loved for keeping this agony from my little boys. When my strength did not allow, my mind was reduced to a white hot light of pain, a scream inside my head. The cleaning only took a few minutes, but it seemed longer. My husband and I would then hurry home because (after the first day) experience taught me that the worst was yet to come. About fifteen minutes after the cleaning my foot would begin to tingle, then sting, then burn. By the time we made the twenty minute trip home it would feel as if it were being held in the deepest pits of hell. It helped to prop it up higher than my head. The lower it was the hotter it felt. I did sometimes weep during those moments because they went on much too long for the breath-holding-teeth-gritting method to help me. 

    One day I took my sister Lila and my niece Shanna along on the trip to see the doctor. Shanna was about twelve, a timid girl that hated injections and seemed to have a low threshold for pain. She spent a lot of time being ill and under a doctor's care. I thought that watching me deal with pain might help her understand that she was not alone the next time she had to deal with something painful. I hoped it might fortify her. I expressed this idea to my sister and she agreed. They went into the examination room with me, and the doctor asked me how long it had been since my last tetanus shot. I could not remember. He went out to tend to some other issue and sent a nurse in with a needle less than an inch long to give me a tetanus injection, "Just in case." The needle barely hurt at all. Then the doctor came back into the room with a different nurse and Lila and Shanna watched as he scrubbed my wound. When he was finished I sat up, took a deep breath, and looked at them. My sister's eyes were filled with respect and something akin to sympathy. My niece looked a bit horrified, and I wondered, "Was this too much for her?"

    As I was hobbling back to the car, I didn't speak. I waited to see what my sister and my niece would say about the experience. Before I'd hobbled more than a dozen steps through the parking lot Shanna cried out, "I can't believe you took that shot and didn't even cry!" Lila and I laughed until we were nearly hysterical. 

    During that hard month my husband took over the cooking and washed dishes a few times, but he would not touch the other housekeeping chores. This was not a big deal to me at that time because I'd fallen into a deep state of depression and hardly bothered with them myself. It was evident that a clean house was important to my spouse but a sober husband was important to me. I think I figured, "If he doesn't care about what I want and need why should I care about what he wants and needs." Plus, I was exhausted from keeping up with my two sons, so housework had hit the rock bottom of my to-do list. I kept the area the boys played in clean, I washed our sheets and clothing. I washed enough dishes to eat off of and cook out of. Every now and then I wiped down the tub, and toilet, and both the bathroom and kitchen sinks. That was about it, so an untidy house was no big deal to me. But he also would not get up in the night with the baby. He would not even get up in the night with me and help with the baby. This was a big deal. Liam was no longer breast feeding, and cranky nights meant trips to the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning for a bottle. I clearly remember crawling through my house on two limbs, cuddling Liam against me like a mother monkey. I used one arm to crawl, one arm to hold the baby under me and pushed up against my chest. I used one leg to crawl, and held the other injured leg out behind me. I did not leave Liam in his crib and crying because his crib was in my room, and I feared that if I left him there, making all that noise, my husband would eventually sit up and, at the very least, smack the baby's little legs. That would have mean war and I was in no shape for war. Once I'd crawled to the kitchen and made the bottle, I would sit with my back against the kitchen wall and gave him half of it, enough to calm him for the trip back to the bedroom. Then when we were back in the bedroom, I gave him the rest of the bottle and put him back in his crib without all the jostling of being carried like a monkey. I remember sitting in the kitchen, feeding the baby, and trying to keep my tears of disappointment and frustration off of his tiny face.

    Once during that time I dared the trip up the thirty-two steps to my parent's house. My husband carried the baby up, and I scooted up the steps on my butt. I asked my mother to help me bathe Liam because for some odd reason, my foot would burn a lot more if I put it low to the ground, which was where it surely was when I stood up for certain tasks or chores, like that one.

    She gave him a nice warm bath in the kitchen sink and marveled at how still he would hold while she poured water over his hair. Both my boys had quickly learned that if they held very still while I washed and rinsed their hair they would not get the water and soap in their eyes. If they fought and wiggled they forced me to just pour it haphazardly over their heads and they did not prefer that.

    When mother finished bathing him she let out the water and wrapped him in a towel. I was sitting nearby with my foot propped up and said, "Quickly! Hand him to me!" She was puzzled but brought him to me as quickly as she could. Liam then began to snuggle into my neck while I dried him off. He would wiggle and snuggle and snuggle and wiggle. My mother and I laughed at the silly little baby then. Now the after-bath-snuggle-bunny is one of my fondest memories of Liam's babyhood.

    I did get to keep my life and my foot, and I didn't even have to have one skin graft. The doctor was happy to tell me that the intense pain I kept feeling day after day meant that my nerves were repairing as we went along. So, I took that knowledge and fed my strength with it. The pain was a good thing. 

    It did not take me years to see the silver lining for that cloud. I am left only with a large scar that has lessened some over the years. I knew, from day one, that I could have lost one of my sons, or seen them in much worse agony than I was in, scarred and maimed for life. I told the doctor what a blessing that day was, compared to what it could have been and explained what I meant. He starred at me a long time before saying, "You have one incredible attitude." 

    I said, "No doctor. I have two incredible sons!" And he smiled.

    So there you have it: Perhaps I had other days that were as blessed, possibly even more. Maybe the time Cory fell and had a bump the size of a duck egg on his forehead, was an even luckier day. Maybe the day Liam got out of the hospital after having bronchitis was a miracle to surpass the day I dropped boiling water. I've certainly had a lot of blessed days! But as far as I, with my week and mortal mind tell, the luckiest and most blessed day of my life I did not win the lottery or a trip to Hawaii. I won something so much better: two unmaimed and living little sons that would grow up to be two grown men any mother would be more than proud of. And so, now and forever, I bless the day of the cooked foot!

UNLOVED (journal entry)

"Forever Pieces of My Broken Heart"

NOW:



The other day, I accidentally spoke to my great-nephew. I say "accidentally" because if I'd had time to think about it I probably would have just smiled at him. I don't like to stress him out. But I rounded a corner and there he was, and it was the most natural thing in the world to say hello, even with a lot of joy in my voice. I had not seen him ages and I love him with all my broken heart! He gave me wary looks and hurried away. It made him uncomfortable because, I can tell, he is not supposed to talk to me. He has probably been discouraged and possibly even forbidden from having a relationship with me. His parents, my niece and her husband, have likely coached him to avoid me. They are part of the "people I love that do not love me," crowd, and unfortunately, it is a bit of a crowd. To date there are fifteen people that I love that will not or cannot even speak to me on any dependable basis. They usually ignore my calls, texts, letters, emails. One often walks right by me in a public place and will not even say hello in response to my greeting. That is, on the days when I am feeling strong enough to even speak. Sometimes, I don't have the strength. Sometimes, to my shame, I walk right by her just like she does me. It has surprised me to learn how much strength it takes to face the near certain rejection of someone you hold very dear. It hurts more than you may imagine to be denied even such a small courtesy as a "hello". I remain amazed that much of my family treats me less courteously than they would a stranger that passed them on the street, a stranger that does not know them and certainly does not love them. This baffles me! I was raised female, and in the south, and back in the day. Being impolite was never an option for people that weren't spitting on me or pelting me in the face. I was taught to be polite and to respond to other's inquiries. A letter asking how you were was deserving of a reply and a like question. Not sending a letter back was unheard of! Thank you notes were not a forgotten thing. Likewise, a greeting on the streets was not to be ignored. If I were to pass Hitler in a grocery store I'd probably show even him the courtesy of a "hello". (If I did not pass out, feet up in the melons, because he was supposed to have died before I was even born.) To do otherwise would be to deny his humanity. Denying his humanity would be denying humanity at large, which would be a huge mistake on my part. Perhaps even my downfall. Pema Chödrön says, “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” And I agree with that idea. But by the grace of God goes Skitch, in my opinion.


Largely, my very humanity is ignored by these family members. Multiple attempts at communication through multiple methods over long periods of time will go without the first response, sometimes this lasts for years. One of them will answer sporadic attempts at communication, and she tries to say she is just too busy to send me a short reply to a monthly "How are you?" A couple of them will cuss me blue if I dare to contact them and, quite honestly, of all the mistreatments I prefer that. At least they are admitting that I am alive, that I am a human being, that I have the ability to understand their insults, that I am not invisible, non existent, irrelevant. I've had enemies I hated enough to cuss blue. I've never had an enemy I hated so much that I would not even acknowledge their existence. I cannot even imagine treating Hitler, or a serial killer, or a child rapist with such contempt and hatred! (And child molesters are the people I have the most trouble understanding and loving.) So, you can imagine that their mistreatment of me, their rejection, the way they ignore my very humanity, bewilders and pains me to the nth degree.


Fifteen people cannot or will not return my love! Isn't that alarming? Isn't that something to be concerned about? All of them are supposed to be members of my family. I say "supposed to be" because they have made it painfully evident that they can choose to not be part of my family, or perhaps, more accurately, to not allow me to be part of theirs. Twelve of these people I would (to this very day, no matter how much they have hurt me) literally take a bullet for. Three of them I love because they are so adored and needed by people that I have loved for years. Isn't it funny (read "wonderful") how you can love by proxy? Two of them, I believe, would talk to me if they were not discouraged or disallowed. (See upper photo.) Two of them, I know, love and miss me and ache over this uncomfortable and unnatural estrangement, perhaps even more than I do. (See lower photo.) I feel for them the most, even more than I do for myself on these melancholy days, when I look squarely at the bare and hateful facts. They are sweet, innocent, beautiful children. They don't really understand what is going on and why they are suddenly not supposed to talk to someone they love. But then again, I don't understand it either. I wonder if anyone truly does?

What did I do to these people? I loved them. I tried as hard as I could to be good to them, to be part of their family. I tried to be there for them when they needed me, to provide any support I could. I did not physically, or mentally, or emotionally, or sexually, or verbally abuse any of them. I simply held ideas that they found vile, and I refused to decry those beliefs, no matter how unpopular they were. I did not realize then that it would cost me their love. But even if I had known that, I would not have lied to them. One of my closely held beliefs is that a love based on falsehoods is no love at all. You cannot love me if you don't even know me. These ideas were not the kind you might assume. They were not things like "All black people are evil/inferior," or "Jack the Ripper was a hero," or "I think all kids should be beaten every day whether they misbehave or not." No, it was more like, "We are all human, we all make mistakes," or "I think sometimes you have to make hard choices but hopefully good will come of it in the long run," or "We should practice forgiveness." My sins are ideas that most would regard as beliefs of unity and peace.

And yet, I would still be worried about this plethora of family that hates (or acts as if they hate) me. Fifteen is no number to be swept under the rug! I would wonder if I were somehow much more unlovable than I knew. I might even wonder if I were, in fact, some horrible human, some monster in disguise, if it weren't for the people that know me better and love me more. These people save my heart and my sanity, possibly they have saved my life. My parents and my sisters have known me all my life, and they think I'm a pretty decent sort. They pray that these others will soon come to realize that I am worth loving. My best friend and adopted sister, Mary, knows me inside and out. She says I am easy to get along with and am very deserving of anyone's love. She tells me that, if there is justice in this world, then one day these people will come to see how much I love them and they will love me in return and be kind to me instead of being cruel to me. It is a hope, and I have stood on that hope for years now. My sons have known me all their lives and have been under my rule most of their days, yet they adore me and tell me they don't understand how anyone could ignore me or disown me. My husband of over a decade knows me better than anyone on Earth and he finds me very lovable. I try to keep a brave face on for him, for misery breeds misery, and he is treated the same way and even worse by most of these people. If he can bear it and be strong, and hold his head up, and keep on loving those that do not or cannot love him... then surely I can do the same. Right? I have no choice when it comes to loving them. If my love came from faucets, I would have turned their spigots off long ago. Life would be so much easier and kinder if I could simply stop loving them until they started loving me in return.
I've tried everything I could think of to get along with them, to show them that I care. Like Wile E. Coyote, I've hit my head against the same brick wall more times than good sense dictates. I've tried letters and phone calls, being patient, giving them space and time, sending gifts, being kinder than kind, reasoning, even pleading but my words fall on deaf ears. Most of the kind moves I make get put under a microscope and examined for flaws, twisted into something ugly even when I imagined there would be no way to do so. "Perhaps I bought that child a book with "witch" in the title because I am calling her a witch?" I kid you not; that is how twisted things get!

And so it goes.

I can't really win. The closest I can come to winning is loving them from afar, despite the pain. Since I cannot help but love them and that love is painful, I choose to focus on the love instead of the agony. Some days I concentrate on doing nothing but loving them and breathing... Breathing is important. Most days I can keep my eye on the people that do love me, the things that make me happy, the beauty of the world, and the beauty of my own life. Sometimes the pain is such that it eclipses all things beautiful, and I have to remind myself that not all my days are so difficult. Some days I have to remind myself to breathe. I want to keep breathing. I want to know what is on the other side of this anguish. I want to know what I will learn from these hard times. I've figured out from experience that pain has a silver lining. I'm usually good at finding it. I had an abusive teacher when I was a child and I've rejected all the abuse, all the fear, all the badness, and what I am left with is strength, ingenuity, and a feeling of accomplishment. This pattern of rejecting the bad and keeping the good usually works brilliantly for me. But this time it is not happening. Still, I remind myself, the silver lining is much more evident on the other side of the pain. This pain seems determined to linger.

I know I am not alone. I am not the first person to be rejected by those I dearly love, and I will not be the last. In my own family, my husband and my sister, Lila, struggle with this pain at least as mightily as I do. And there are other families going through the same agony, the same rejection. If you are in a similar predicament with any of your family, perhaps there is nothing you can do either except love them and breathe. Maybe you need to stop hitting your head on a brick wall, concentrate on the good things in your life, step back and pretend that time and space are your allies. Perhaps they truly are. Focus on the fact that, sure, you cannot make them love you, but neither can they make you stop loving them. And, most importantly, no one can ever take your memories from you. They are yours to love and cherish forever. If you are in the same sad boat that I have found myself in for over a decade now, if you love someone and they don't return that love, I hope you stay focused on the good in life, I hope you don't give in to the pain by turning to anger and hatred. I hope you focus on the love, and on yourself. I urge you to concentrate on things you can control, and on things of beauty. And I certainly hope how soon they come around and learn to return your love! As surely as I know, "We are all human," I also know that everyone deserves to be treated with respect; Everyone deserves to be loved.

"Forever Pieces of My Broken Heart II"

SUMMER CHILDHOOD

Skitch eating watermelon

THEN & NOW:

This summer has been pleasant! I am very happy and surprised to be able to say so. We've had a might too much rain for the garden's sake, but I am relieved that summer has not tortured me. For many years I have dreaded and hated the summer season. I've had jobs that left me out in the sun and heat until I was miserable, cars that had broken air conditioners, and homes that were poorly insulated. It seemed I could keep warm in the winter, but could not stay even marginally comfortable in the summer. But I do remember, there was a time when summer was synonymous with magic. I've often said that Heaven will be an eternal summer filled with eternal children, because I've never met a child that didn't understand the allure of summer, and the combination of children and summer seems a miraculous mixture. Even I know that summer was extra special when I was young. 
 

My sisters were ten and twelve years older than me. It was as though I were the only child in the second family my parents made. Therefore, many of my summer-kid memories are solitary ones. I loved riding in the back of the truck, but I usually rode in complete solitude. I remember the rush of the wind in my face and my long hair flying wildly behind me, like a banner, becoming an unruly mess that I would have to untangle with great suffering later in the day, either at our arrival at church or town or before I braided it at bedtime. My oldest sister Sandi often took the chore on herself and saved me the agony of battling with my hair.

A young boy once told me that he often saw me riding in the back of the truck, and that I looked like, “a big blonde dog riding all alone in the back of the truck with your hair flying around like that.” I never was sure if I should punch him or thank him, so I just gave him a funny look and moved on.

I didn't care if I did look like a dog! I loved those times in the back of the truck. I loved the solitude, the quiet of white noise – the sweet wind. I loved the warmth of the sun, and my thoughts became my good companions. One day, Lila and I were in the back of the truck together and Dad picked up a hitchhiker. The exceedingly annoying fellow tried again and again to make conversation with me. I didn't like him much anyway because I suspected he had dishonorable intentions in regards to my sister Lila, and I enjoyed daydreaming or singing in those usually solitary hours, so I resented his intrusion. Lila was welcome company; this chatty fellow I could do without. I felt couldn't sing with him present so I wrapped myself in a familiar daydream and tried repeatedly to ignore him. 
 

Finally, he asked, "I see you back here all the time; how do you keep from getting bugs in your mouth?" 
 

I turned my head his way and pulled my hair back from my face so that I could look him directly in the eye when I very firmly but calmly said, "I keep my big mouth shut." 
 

He looked a little shocked, and then he laughed. I turned back to the road and, at last, he took the hint and left me to my silence.

Lila still laughs when she tells the story of how her little baby sister "put that big guy in his place." 
 

When my niece Tanya, Lila's daughter, and my cousin Ramona were visiting we would put blankets in the back of the truck and lie down between them. Even on summer nights the wind was cool enough to snuggle under a blanket and stare up at the stars on our way home from church, watching the tree limbs whiz by and the stars stand still. I sometimes asked Tanya and Ramona, “What would it be like to just fly up through those night clouds into the dark, cold, starry sky? What would we find up there?” We would guess about the many wonders that could be hiding and waiting beyond the darkness, lit up by starlight. What magic that pondering was! 
 

I spent many summer hours in the great swooping swing that Daddy had hung for me. He climbed very high in a tree to hang it and it had a great reach. It was more like a low trapeze than a swing. I would practice “tricks” or listen to my little transistor radio, or swing gently while I read a good book.

On the hottest days I would make my way to a large flat rock in the heart of the woods and settle down to spend hours with a good book. The rock was cool; the woods were emerald; and the book was engaging. Summer was great.

I spent summer days helping Daddy with the horses, or the plowing, or carrying the cold spring water up to the house. Making my way through the dappled woods with two buckets or two gallon jugs full of the spring water we drank and cooked with. I could feel the specks of sunlight kiss my cheeks and arms as I walked. Running water was a luxury we did not know, and to my mother's great consternation, we shared the spring with a large frog. When she complained about a frog in the drinking water, Pop would wink at me and say, “Well, he won't drink too much.”

I did not mind the frog. I did not mind fetching water, and I loved taking care of the barn animals, and helping with the garden. Those chores I truly enjoyed. But I did not like most of the chores my mother and sister requested my help with now and then. I hated doing dishes and sweeping floors. I did not see the point in making a bed or folding a towel. I guess the only “woman's work” I enjoyed was helping Momma hang the wet clothes on the line. When I was quite young, she would say, “ready” and I would hand her the next item from the basket, fascinated by the precise way she hung each damp cloth on the line. The wringer washer had squeezed most of the water out of the clothing and my job was to shake the item out and wait until she was ready to hang it on the line. As I grew, I was allowed to hang some of the clothes myself. I would dash off to the other end of the line with a towel or a shirt while Momma hung the big awkward sheets and jeans. I tried my best to pin mine as neatly as she did hers. Once she grew sick and spent most of her time in bed, hanging clothes on the line was largely my job.

Late in the summer evenings I would sit on the porch, watch the miracle of the sunset, and feel the silver gloaming settle all around me like a damp sheet. Sometimes I would sing, "Swing low, sweet chariot," while the sun swung low on the horizon. Dad often came out and sat with me. He would read his Bible until it grew too dark. He would chew tobacco, looking up from The Good Book occasionally in deep, thoughtful silence. Once it grew too dark to read, he would talk to me about what he was studying, or about the woods and the creatures all around us. He would say , “Listen to them Da Dats! It's just thirty days 'til frost once you hear them start singing.” It would still be summer, but autumn was whispering a warning through the wind.

Summer storms were an adventurous sort of magic. When the wind picked up and the tree leaves turned over, showing their pale bellies, my mother would say, “Look at the trees, Dido. They are praying for rain and God will answer. He gives them what they need. It'll rain soon.”

The thunder would begin to roll off in the distance and Sandi, with her one short leg, would limp out to the porch with a wild and natural look behind her eyes. As our grandmother, that I'd never had the blessing to meet, had shared the storms with Sandi, my big sister would now share them with me. “Listen, Dee Dee! Hear the thunder? It's God's voice and the lightening is his sword. Grab us a quilt. The storm is coming!”

She told me what Grandmother had told her, and I would run and grab a patchwork quilt for my sissy and me. We would snuggle under it in awe as the lightening stuck and the thunder rumbled all around us. We felt safe and yet surrounded by power and danger. Sometimes the sound of the raindrops on the tin roof were too loud to speak over, but we hardly knew it. It was not a time for words. Who wants to interrupt God!?

Until she married and moved out when I was five years old and she was fifteen, Lila was my near constant companion. It was summer when she took me on a walk to a graveyard and taught me how to pray. It was summer when she took me behind some bushes to pee and taught me the good rule of “if you can see them they can see you.” It was summer when she told me about the small green man she had seen in the woods, and summer when she wrote “The Little People” a poem about fairies dancing in light bulbs, to sooth my fear of the dark.

My parents and one or both of my sisters were there every day. I was an innocent child in a world of enchanted “grown-ups”. My only child companions were occasional ones. For one wonderful summer my cousins Wendy, Wade, and P.T. were there, but usually my summers were blessed only by the visits from Tanya and Ramona. They brought me kid-company. We would play made up games with funny names like “Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Jim” or “Wild Indians”. If we grew “peckish” (a little hungry) then we ate birch bark, and teaberry leaves, and ground cherries. If we were more than peckish we would put some yellow mustard on bread and have mustard sandwiches, or have Sandi slice up a garden tomato which we would eat with mayonnaise on biscuits left over from breakfast. At night we would pull all the couch cushions into the floor and “camp” in the living room. Usually Sandi read us a story or ten before we shuffled off to our camp sight. The crickets were so plentiful and so loud they sounded like they covered the whole house and we would attempt to “settle down” to the song they surrounded us with. My kitten “Pens” would come sneaking along in the dark and ask for attention. He would attack our eyes when we blinked, or our lips when we whispered, and wrestle with our fingers. He helped us giggle and get into trouble with Daddy and Momma. We would try to be quiet and wait until everyone was asleep then sneak up and eat cakes and drink pop when we could find them, or mustard sandwiches and water when we could not. Often we fell asleep waiting for everyone else to do so.

Now all those summers are far away, nothing but sweet memories, and I am the enchanted grown-up talking about God's voice, and The Little People, and the warnings of Da Dats. My summers have been full of working in the heat and running frantically here and there as though the world might implode if I miss just one scheduled meeting. Summer is not as magical as it once was, but every now and then, when I'm lying in the yard with my sons Cory and Will, looking up at the wonders of the starry sky I ask them, “What would it be like to just fly up through those night clouds into the dark, cold, starry sky?” and as they answer, I am reminded of the magic that is still there all around me, waiting for me to take the the time to see it.

Skitch in the summer

ODE TO GHITA (journal entry & poem)

    NOW: Journal entry July 12, 2013

    I have put off writing about this recent event in my life because it still hurts a lot, but pain is to be faced, shared, and (usually as a result of the first two) lessened.

    For Mother's Day we went to the beach. My best friend/sister Mary and I cooked up the plan. We took all four of our sons and my spousal unit. Another good friend and her daughter joined us and we all had a wonderful time. I had invited my parents and all my sisters and my sister's kids, but they all, for one reason or another, declined. Those of us that went certainly enjoyed the sunshine and the sea, nearly as well as the company. It was a marvelous time!

    In the car, on the way home, they told me that my dear Ghita had died. Following Mary's advice, the menfolk had waited until the vacation was over to tell me. The housesitter had called on Mother's Day to let my sons and husband know that the cat was gone. Mary had heard and told them it would ruin my entire vacation to know it now and there was nothing anyone could do. So, they told me when we loaded the car up and headed for home. I starred out the window and cried. My sweet and lovely Ghita. My best fur friend. My companion when everyone else deemed me in a mood so foul I was unfit for company. I would never again see her little eyes squinting my way, never again hear the sweet song of her bone-deep purring, never again feel her soft fur under my fingertips, or wince from her sharp little nails massaging me. My eyes cried for days...My heart may cry forever...

SAND IN YOUR CRAW

"Sandy Skitch"
Photo by Skitch

THEN:

        Most kids don't like to eat their vegetables, but I did not like to eat my meats. I stayed anemic and weak. I caught every "bug" coming and going. Add to this the fact that my parents were traumatized from losing their first blond daughter to pneumonia and now they had a second blond that was sickly. You can understand that I spent a lot of time at the clinic. They hustled me to the doctor every time I sneezed, and I sneezed a lot! 

        In those days doctors didn't pussyfoot around. If you had an ailment you usually got a nice hot shot of penicillin. I got dozens of them. In my child's mind, I believed I could fight the nurses off when they came at me with those needles. I battled with the exact same fervor when they took my temperature because, back then, they did that by sticking a mercury thermometer up door number two and, though I was nearly a baby, I found that a most humiliating experience! I could not imagine that I was supposed to cooperate with that. I was sure I was supposed to fight that indignity with everything in me. Therefore, many trips to the doctor included two fits from a very frantic little Skitch, one prior to seeing the doctor and one after. The nurses soon offered to take my temperature under my arm if I would "hold real still like a big girl." I don't know that any three year old could ever sit as motionless as I did that day. I was a statue for the three minutes they had that thing under my arm. I did not speak, and I barely breathed. I was not going to ruin the opportunity to save myself all that prodding! But they offered me no relief from the torment of the red hot penicillin shots, and I continued to wage wild war with my oppressors, convinced that  I could win. And I was right; I would have soon succeeded if I'd stayed on that course. At three years of age, I can remember it taking two nurses and my mother to hold me down long enough and still enough to get the medicine in my system.  

        The next time I was sick my mother, who had always taken me to the doctor, sighed and said that, likely, the doctor would give me another shot. She reminded my dad that it had taken three people to hold me down the last time. She complained to him that she did not know how many more times she could help people wrestle me down and force a shot in me. She said it completely broke her heart when I screamed and fought like a wild child. Pop told her it did not have to be that way, and those words set him up for her challenge, "Oh really? Well then, you take her and see if you have any better luck than I do." Even at three, I could hear the dare in her voice. But I did not understand that working with him would make her feel like I liked him better. I loved them both very much, but Dad had a way of communicating with me as though I was an adult. I wasn't an adult but I certainly was an old soul; I responded quite positively to that vote of confidence, that admission of humanity. 

        I remember thinking that going with Daddy would be new and different. I remember that I still dreaded the doctor and feared the shot. Dad carried me into the clinic on his shoulders, probably relying on the novelty of being up so high to distract me from my fear of entering the clinic. Little did he know that I would have gone with him into places infinitely more frightening than a doctor's office. I feared nothing when I was in his arms. 

        While he walked he said, "Possumfrog, Your mommy says you've been fighting those nurses when they give you shots. Now, you know they are trying to help you get better. Why do you fight them like that?" 

        I felt a wash of shame followed immediately by a wave of righteousness. "It hurts Daddy. Those old shots sting and burn so much!" 

        "I know they do, but you don't have to throw a fit. That just gets you all upset, the nurses all upset, your mommy all upset. It makes a bad situation even worse." 

        He walked through the glass doors and signed me in at the registration desk. Then he sat in one of the hard plastic chairs and put me in one beside him. I'd hoped he had given up the topic, but he looked at me and picked it up again, "You don't have to pitch a fit." 

        I wiggled out of my seat and stood in front of him, leaning against his leg. In a low voice I said, "But it hurts me, Daddy." 

        "I know, but you're strong. You can take it. You have sand in your craw! I take shots and I don't cry. You know what I do?" 

        I shook my head. I was all eyes and ears. This might be the secret of all secrets!

        "I take a deep breath, I grit my teeth, and shut my eyes..." He paused and demonstrated. He let out his breath after a few seconds, "And it's over so fast, and the pain is all gone. I don't cry because I have sand in my craw too." 

        I remember staring into his bright blue eyes and thinking about how much I wanted to be just like this man. If he had sand in his craw then, by golly, I needed sand in my craw too! 

        He added, "Now, maybe they won't even give you a shot, but if they do will you try it for me?"  

        I nodded. Of course I would. 

        The doctor prescribed a shot, just like my mom predicted, and sent me to the nurses station to get it. When I stretched out on the table obligingly for the nurse she threw a puzzled look at my dad. I only saw it because she was nearly blocking my view of him. I did not take my eyes off my daddy.  
        He said, "You can do it. I'll tell you when to take the breath, grit your teeth, and close your eyes." 

        He watched the nurse behind me intently. In a moment he said, "Now!" I sucked in a deep breath, gritted my teeth together so hard it made my head hurt, and closed my eyes. I showed my teeth like I'd seen him do. What a face I must have made!  

        The shot was hot but quick, over before I had time to throw a fit. When I opened my eyes, Dad was smiling at me proudly. Sure as shooting! His girl definitely had lots of sand in her craw! That's what he told the nurse, and my mother, and loads of other people from that day on.  

        I cried over one more shot in my life and Daddy understood that one. I was nine years old and in the hospital. They woke me up with a penicillin shot in my thigh. I'd had a long eight days in the hospital and been poked and prodded until I was exhausted and raw. Daddy rubbed my head and said, "That's okay, Possumfrog. They didn't give you time to take a breath and grit your teeth. You still have plenty of sand in your craw." 

        As an adult, I used to wonder if my dad would have loved me any less if I'd continued to cry over pain. I had my feelings hurt over the very idea for a while. Aren't adults silly sometimes? Now I know that he would not have loved me any less. Dad didn't teach me how to deal with pain for his own sake. He didn't teach me because it humiliated him when a three year old cried. He taught me for my sake. He shared a valuable life skill that had seen him through many a hard spot. He was passing something on he thought I would need, and he was right. I've needed every single grain of that sand he put in my craw!