Livin' The Dream

I have had this little fantasy – this perfect-life thing – since I was a kid. There would be a Mommy (me) and a Daddy and kids and we would live out in the country and have horses and be happy. I’d paint and cook fantastic meals and learn how to make pies like my grandmother made. My house would be warm and welcoming and smell like propane and dial soap and apples. I’d have flour on my hands and glass door knobs and wood floors and people would want to visit and never want to leave.

There would not, under any circumstance, be divorce. Or fighting. Or poverty.

I think I watched one too many Little House on the Prairies.

So. All grown up, now. Let’s see how that whole fantasy thing worked for me.

Mommy – check.

Daddy – check.

Kids, country life, horses – check, check and check again.

Hardwood floors, propane heat, painting, cooking, pies and glass door knobs – All there.

I would have to say, up until a few years ago, things were going along as planned.  And then they weren’t.

So what’s a girl to do when someone steals her ‘little girl dreams’…  ?

For me it was less like stealing and more like … sharing them with a friend who didn’t take care of them. I thought surely something so valuable would be protected, guarded to the point of death, even.  

Ehhh… not so much. Here’s the thing about dreams: they’re really important, but usually only to the dreamer.  And if they become too important, well, then it’s almost like they’re an idol. The danger comes when fantasy starts to edge out reality.

But you know what? The reality is no marriage is without disagreement. Ours included. I wonder now, if we’d let off a little more steam in the early years, maybe Mt. Vesuvius wouldn’t have come calling after our 20^th anniversary.  After two lawsuits, alcoholism, death in the family, near bankruptcy, and 10 years of drought, somehow, we held onto half the ranch. But in the end, we fought and we divorced. So what? The miracle is we managed to remain friends.

And so what if I don’t have glass door knobs. Chipped enamel suits me fine.

Best of all, when my granddaughters come to visit – they never want to leave. 

I give up on trying to understand why things happened the way they did. 

I think I’m pretty lucky. I got to live the dream for a long time. I hear my the excitement in my granddaughters' voices when they call me Gramma and they want to go feed the cows, I  realize I still have the best parts left, after all!

And heck, if I decide I want glass door knobs someday, they sell them at Home Depot. 

 

small

i make myself small 

as if i could hide from the hands that formed me

the heart that dreamed me

the eyes that saw me 

when i was yet unmade

i cower in the shadows 

giving in to fear

trying to disappear

though i need to find the way 

back to your side

i shrink back instead

as if i could hide

What I Must Sound Like to God

Here I am

On the shelf

Drying

Cracking

Water might help

Fix what I’m lacking

Here comes the potter

Oh no

Here we go

Back to the wheel

Human play doh

Spinning

In circles

Around and around

Where am I going?

Where am I bound?

Am I a slop bucket?

Or a turkey platter

Maybe a bowl

With an intricate pattern

I think I should help

Put in my two cents

Make me a ...

Oops…hello?

What is this?

I’m back on the shelf

Just like before

Drying

Cracking

Getting so bored

Hello out there...

God?

I’m starting to dry

Water might help

If you don’t mind

Now there’s a moral in all this

A point to this tale

Whether you’re crystal

Or a milk pail

Living life on a shelf

Means there ain’t much to lose

But if you can’t take the wheel

You’ll never be used

If I Really Believed...

Rich Mullins wrote: Sometimes my life just don’t make sense at all. When the mountains seem so big and my faith just seems so small. So hold me, Jesus. Cause I’m shaking like a leaf. You have been King of my glory. Won’t you be my Prince of peace?

When I hear that song, I think of a shimmering stand of aspen, their trunks shivering naked in the early snow.

If I were a tree, that’s the one I’d want to be.  They come up first after a fire.  Then, they leaf out quickly, giving shelter for the evergreens that will, in years to come, show their gratitude by starving them out. 

In the spring, the aspens’ pale green leaves are always in motion, whispering songs on the wind. And in autumn the mountains are jeweled with their golden stands, glowing like a refiners’ fire. 

Isn’t that the way it is?  Some give while others take. Aspen are born to give beauty, to give rest.  They even give in winter: in the face of certain death.

The Bible says, 'To live is Christ and to die is gain.'

That's like, the church's motto, right? But if I really believed that to depart and be with Christ would be far better than remaining here in this tent of skin, wouldn't that change the way I live my life? Wouldn't I love others more?  Even unlovable others? Wouldn't I be more willing to empty myself into a world that seems set on choking the life from me? 

I was in Valle Vidal one winter years ago and I remember looking up on the side of the mountain and seeing the aspen, lined up like soldiers standing resolute guard in front of the fat and greedy evergreens. Even then, even in the icy grip of winter, they were faithful. Shivering and denuded of their glory, yes. Emaciated as  survivors of a holocaust, yes. But there.

The stark contrast of their pale limbs against the rich foliage behind them, reminded me that all is not always as it seems, that this life is merely a sequence of seasons.  That this too shall pass.  That there is more, so much more to our world than what we see with our eyes and that, like Jesus said, if we don't proclaim it, the rocks themselves will cry out.  

I'm no Rich Mullins. But I know what he meant when he wrote,

'And the single hawk bursts into flight
And in the east the whole horizon is in flames
I feel thunder in the sky
I see the sky about to rain
And I hear the prairies calling out Your name'...

French Creek Coon

Excerpted from French Creek

copyright 2011

I used to try my hand at snaring.  It wasn’t too hard catching coyotes and rabbits and such on account of they were dumber than me.  But coons were another thing.  They were smart and they were strong and they usually found a way to take what they wanted and get out without tripping the snare, which was probably why I wanted to catch me one so bad.

So just imagine my surprise when, one morning as I checked my traps, I found a big daddy coon caught just above both back legs.  His pelt was thick and full with winter growth and it would bring a good price if I could get it off him in one piece.  Already, he’d chewed half way through one leg trying to get free.  If I waited much longer, he’d chew through the other one and then he’d bleed to death and solve my problem for me, except there wasn’t much I could do with half a pelt. 

I had to kill him.  But how?

The best way to do it would be to knock him in the head, but I hadn’t figured out how to get close enough to do that without him getting in a few good licks of his own and I didn’t fancy tangling with those teeth.  Besides, who knew but what he had the rabies, or something worse?  As I was pondering on the situation, an idea came upon me and I dug around until I found a sturdy stick with a fork in one end, which I wedged beneath his chin.  I held him there, pinned to the ground.  He growled and hissed at first, and then he went still and just stared back at me. 

His eyes glowed like one of my marbles in the jar over the cook stove.  Gold and brown and swirly like, they were cat-eyes, flashing fire and looking deep and thoughtful at the same time.  He knew he was trapped. Being as how I was the one had trapped him, for that reason he hated me.  He also feared me, on account of I had him pinned to the ground with a stick around his neck.  I knew as soon as I let him go it’d be nine hands round—with him coming after me all claws and wild fury. But I couldn’t get enough leverage to whack him if I didn’t let him go. I had myself a predicament.

And then another thought come upon me and I frowned.  Maybe, I didn’t have him trapped after all.  Maybe he was the one that had me.

I remember a time when my sister and me loved each other, but we were younger then and had no reason not to.  I suppose as time passed and we both changed, it was only natural we’d grow apart.  Trees do that too, you know.  They have to.  They can only grow up next to each other for so long and then there comes a time they have to push away or they end up twisted together forever and you can’t separate them because they share the same roots, wear the same rings in their flesh, have the same scars from growing and then not being able to grow and then growing again. 

I couldn’t do that.  I couldn’t be like her.  So I guess that means it was me that pushed away first, but I don’t remember it.  I think I was scared of being lost in her shadow.  Of becoming not like her, but part of her.  I don’t know.  Maybe it was just that we were too different in all the ways that mattered and I don’t just say that on account of the years that separated us.  It was other things.  It was Father.

When me and Ma came apart, it was her that pushed first.  I think she thought I was the strong one out of her two children, and since she wasn’t able bodied enough for the three of us, she cut me loose, like a doe will do when she can’t make enough milk for both her babies.  And once she figured out she’d made the wrong choice, that I wasn’t the strong one after all, she couldn’t go back and change it.  We can’t go back.  I learned that.  Still, I couldn’t help wondering how it made her feel, or if she even let herself feel anything at all.  I didn’t.  I taught myself not to.  But then, that’s just how I remember it and there’s a chance I’m not remembering right.  It could be I didn’t teach myself not to feel after all.  Could be I learned it from her.

When she died, a part of me died with her. 

I stayed in the barn more.  Even started sleeping out there, in the hay above the mules.

I wanted to leave French Creek—God knows I wanted to—but I couldn’t.  My roots had grown into the soil, gotten wedged in between the red brown rocks of the canyon so that I couldn’t leave without tearing up the very thing that gave me life.  Sometimes I felt like that coon, one leg caught in a trap, chewing away on my own flesh to be free. Suppose with all that anger inside, it’s natural I turned out bad. 

Because, really, I never had much of a chance to be any other way.