Barkley Memories - Road Warriors

It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since we lost Barkley. But I am so happy with all the photos we took, especially the ones we took during our commute from Indy to Chicago for several years. I never took my eyes off the road; I just held up the little point-and-shoot, aimed it into the back of the truck, and took a shot. Thanks for the memories.

Mom,  that's like the third burger place you've passed up!

 

As the truck headed south, into farmland, happy to be away from the thicker traffic, the snow was still piled high from the massive storm almost two weeks ago. The drifts looked so serene, waves tossed up against farm fence, but other signs told of the dangers that had been here, two cars still in ditches and the one jackknifed semi in the median, as well as spots where a Saturn and a Smart Car shed their skin, bits of fiberglass and plastic strewn about, the rest of the remains removed in a bucket.

But we were even happier to be past the city's outskirts, that short stretch I must travel that makes me very anxious not to break down.  There's one stretch where, but for the highway and the knowledge, you wouldn't know you were in a city.

There are the houses, some farm style, probably erected when this was just farms, fading and falling, some windows shuttered or broken, some still lived in, overgrown plots littered with the broken and the unused, buckets, tools, machines, things that once were crafted to serve a purpose of function or work, left to lie idly by those that either abandoned these places or live idle within.  Even the trees, bend down as if tired of making an effort, blossoming each year in the sullied impiety that is a once thriving place that dies through uncaring neglect, its burgeoning, nothing more a bitter and tenacious scrap of another season's memory, than a desire to grow and thrive.

With a sigh of relief, I take that final dogleg south.  

This stretch of highway has been driven a hundred times, yet I notice something different on each drive.  It's not the obvious, giant "HELL IS REAL" sign (we're on I-65, we already know that) or the XXX Family Restaurant (sorry, when I think "XXX", family restaurant just doesn't spring to mind). Instead, it's an old barn, now razed, a river that's left its banks, a tiny little cross with a name by the side of the road.

I don't listen to books on tape for these drives. Sometimes, music plays; sometimes it is silent. Mostly, I keep my senses on the road, for this is a treacherous stretch of large trucks, often as inattentive as they are massive. Sometimes you have one in front and one behind and gaining, no place to go if the one in front decides to stop, the Bat Truck only the Oreo filling between several tons of steel, and I retreat to the slow lane, where I'll happily let teenagers give me that "look" as I do the speed limit.  I've driven this stretch often enough to know that the opposing forces of a semi's mass and my will, if drawn suddenly together, would be a meeting that could be irremediable.

Sometimes they give you a warning before they try to kill you, a signal before they suddenly dart into your lane,  just feet in front of you, making you slam on your brakes, so they can pass the truck going .3 mph less than them. Usually, though, the danger is inarticulate, not knowing it's danger. So I listen as well as watch.

There are always the signs, fast food, gas stations, some bright shiny new, an Arby's, and a Super 8 that's been a welcome respite from this road in bad weather for many people. There's a new McDonald's, advertising large clean restrooms (a welcome change from the ones further north, where they have to lock them because someone might break in and clean them). Then there are old signs, weathered, leaning away from the wind.  Failed businesses dot the landscape, "Boom City", a faded but futuristic-looking abandoned fireworks place that stands in isolation in a landscape of cornfields. So out of place in a remote, rural area, it looks like some alien craft that just landed there and built itself a parking lot as they waited for the mother ship.

What is there to look at, some of you may be thinking?  It's Indiana, flattened out by giant glaciers millions of years ago.  It's flat, there's corn, that's about it.  But beauty can be like that, as subtle as a whisper, yet as strong as faith.  Beauty isn't always young, perfect skin, vast mountains, or the vivid colors of velvets and fine gems.  Beauty is there, on an open road, in the sky, in a vast field of ripe corn,  in a church with a crucifix that likely came out here on a wagon, the serene and battered Christ upon it, transcending the marks of time and generations, a visage to which you can only lower your eyes in humility and ask forgiveness.

Yes, it's flat, but some roads stretch and glisten like jewels in hard rain flowing down as if to wash the landscape clean.  There are weathered homes and stubborn farms, there is a sudden rise to a river that has carried more than history to its silent end.  There are miles and miles of fields, with nothing but corn and fence rows, a barn, and silo jutting up like one of those pop-up greeting cards, set there, flat on the very edge of the earth's table. It's the windy sunlight of space and summer, a morning filled with bells, an afternoon filled with grace, it's the church of God's creation, as farmers tend to its Host and our history.

As I drive and look, I think—to the phone hopefully not ringing at 2 a.m., to the days ahead, to the days past as I see the Indianapolis 103 miles sign and realize I'm more than halfway there, smiling as I relax into the seat.

There's a time in every trip when you settle into the drive, no matter how long.  As a family, and for my Dad, when we were kids, driving on our vacation trips seemed almost effortless, as we watched the landscape change from green to brown to mountains and back to brown. We'd hear stories of his youth, of him and Mom growing up together in Montana, the radio off, the only music the sound of my Mom's relaxed laughter, a laughter I can still sometimes hear. For I hear her voice in mine. I'm told we sound alike, and there are days I can crack open the window and the warmth of the wind will blow in and around me, warming my cheeks and the back of my throat and as look up to a contrail that has caught my eye, our laughter will echo in the wide spaces ahead.

What I recall of those long-ago trips, other than the laughter, was just sitting and looking out the windows for miles, for what was most memorable were the landscapes, stopping when we got tired or thirsty, and actually looking and touching the wonders we'd read about in school. The Grand Coulee Dam, the drive-through redwood tree. Then back in the car, with postcards and maybe a souvenir baseball hat. I saw mountains and tumbling landslides, and fish leaping against gravity up a ladder, and once even a buffalo, kept on a small piece of range on which resided a little restaurant.

I had never in my life been next to an animal that big. He was old and completely tame, raised by the husband and wife at the restaurant, with a few acres to roam and enough wild memory to twitch in running freedom in his dreams. I was afraid at first to approach him, almost blind in my fear, but I crept up, drawn by soft eyes the color of earth, and the warm flank. Judging by his breathing, the slow, patient release of air, that great steam engine of sound, I knew he would not hurt me. I reached out through the fence rails and touched the giant soft velvet bloom of his nose as he looked back with those knowing eyes,  set in ancient bones as enormous as the future, a countenance as powerful as history, as motionless as memory. And we stood together, a little auburn-haired girl and that lone remnant of a past that's faded to nothing but dust and cornered thought, all alive, yet still alone.

But on this drive, all I am thinking about is what I have in front of me, the tumbled landscapes of glacier stone and great pristine rivers, thin as a rope from the air. Anything that really requires my mind, the gas and engine instruments, a scan for traffic, occurs in brief, unhurried intervals as the truck carries me with it, all those memories and thoughts of past road trips, of tears, of childlike bursts of laughter, of family, mechanical, rhythmic memory of the past that I carry with me forward.

Everything that I  might worry about, whether the phone will wake me at 2 a.m., that case I have to finish, a washer that broke beyond repair and needs to be replaced, lies suspended for this time as the sun creeps back inside the earth, driving the shadows forth.

The open road, a dimension free of time and space that flows from childhood to the trembling, secret ardor of the future. It's a road little changed from a child's hand out the window in the breeze, to the older foot on the gas pedal of an old British car, on a Summer day,  pressing down, carrying with it the echo of childish want, the passion, and unrest of adulthood. The road rushing under, rushing on. Way too quickly.

As we near where I will live during the work week, Barkley leans into me, as if recognizing what is going past the window, flowing smoothly from left to right, buildings, and doorways, a small expanse of marsh, each in its ordered place, there in the dimming light. Perhaps he recognizes those things as we draw near. Either that or he is listening to something much further away than the small, confined vehicle we inhabit. Perhaps he only pretends to be listening because, in his heart, he already knows the sound.

I listen to, not just look, to the whoosh of the garage door, to the creak of a door, to the feeling of falling into a simple place with old Mission furniture, a framed photo on the shelf, and a Cross on the wall, reminding me that I am all alive but never alone.

Brigid

Monday Musings

Monday is the start of another work week for most. I have been avoiding the news, hearing my team and I painted with the same brush as everyone who shares the same employer, labeled as overpaid, lazy people who spend their days surfing the internet for cat memes while doing "no work."  In my experience, like any employer, there are slackers, and I have carried the load of more than one in my career. However, we are not all of the same cloth. I think of a day where I spent 14 hours straight in a HazMat suit in 100-degree weather, walking grids through a cornfield looking for the smoking gun amidst the body parts, not just one day but several, then went home to burn my clothes and quietly cry in the dark.

Just a sound, a specific smell, can take me back to that furious history, where sometimes all that is left of the battle is jagged metal twisted into living ground, annealing into that which it drove into head-on. That is often a path as swift and narrow as glory itself, until glory is gone and all that remains is the weeping earth. It has broken lesser men and women, but we do it because it needs to be done, no matter the hours or the weather, laying aside our own griefs to tend to the griefs of another. 

So, I just shake my head as I pat the separation papers from HR on the antique teacher's desk where I write. Perhaps someone else would like to take on that load while others throw stones, but I don't have enough years left on this earth to carry it.

For I'm no stranger to hard work, whether it was with Uncle Sam, the airlines, or that little County where I served as coroner. I learned about hard work early on, facing it like a battle in which you carry ancient wounds. You can’t live on a farm or a ranch without learning about hard work. I spent ten years as a young bride living such a life with my former husband so long ago. I know the signs of impending birth in a heifer. I know how to cut a single longhorn from a herd of fifty with nothing but an ATV and a dog, all while avoiding the pointy ends. I didn’t compare nail polish colors with my girlfriends, because long fingernails sort of get in the way when you might have to grease a cupped hand and naked arm with Betadine and lubricant to help a breached calf make its way into the world. I’ve fallen face-first into stuff you don’t want to know about, and cried like a child to find a calf still and cold after I spent two days nursing her after her mama died.

It wasn’t Green Acres, though I think we had their house. It had nothing to do with Norman Rockwell and everything to do with the hundreds of different ways a heart can freeze.

It was a valuable life lesson. Hard work, hard decisions, made on evenings like that one years later as I worked away at my home, listening to the sound echo in an empty house, learning about life and love with all the salt and truth one can expect from the swing of a hammer. It taught me more than how physics and your thumb meet; your thumb will lose. It taught me about budgets and planning, as well as the basics of working with wood, nails, and drywall. It taught me what I am capable of, and it taught me to dream the dreams of a child again.

As Partner in Grime and I worked to clear out some flowerbeds, finding bits of an ancient lattice, I had to stop and sort my words as memories came unbidden—color, movement, shape. The first was of my mom bending over the garden, helping my dad weed; a good woman over whom death had already cast its shadow as surely as the apple tree shading her that day. Our rescued wiener dog mix Pepper pranced around her in play, barking joyously. Standing there in that barren flower bed a lifetime later, I could still smell her perfume on the air; I could hear that bark, and the remembrance of the fluid movements of her hands in the soil was as tangible to me as a tide. Gentle, measured, certain.

I think back to the days on the farm, to another house, and I remember not the hard times but the good. I remember the last winter there, when I helped a neighbor pull a reluctant calf from his mother’s womb. If I close my eyes, I can relive that next moment in which I ceased to breathe myself as the calf did not. In that moment, all I could hear were the tiniest sounds, the fairy feet of barn mice, and the creak of a rafter. Then, in a rush of indignation, came the mighty and protesting bawl of that newly born bull calf, his cries from a birth-wet mouth awakening something in his weary mother, who lay so still there under the dark moon, both of us totally spent from the effort. I still can picture his trusting eyes fixed on her as she rose up to sniff and take him in with that remarkable snuffling devotion of a mother.

Today will be another long week. When I next return home after work, it will be dark. I will replenish supplies, taking out an empty dog food sack to the trash. The driveway will lie in a placid, warm slumber, silent under my feet. I’ll pull closed the back door, looking at land that holds neither corn nor cows, seeing the rise of another old house in the distance as I begin a clog-stomping run back onto the porch. The chill Spring air whistles through my shirt, tickling my skin, scorching my bare cheeks, and the back of my throat.

Inside the door, where the mailman pushed it through, lies a postcard from Partner in Grime's latest trip. The handwriting looks almost like him: slender, strong, and focused. I can practically smell the tonic water as I tear open the envelope and drink in the words. Those short words are water to me, the paper a quiet pool, myself merely one of those little water bugs that lie not quite on the surface nor beneath it—but in that quiet line of demarcation that is neither water nor air, earth nor heaven; exposing to the outside world only what is necessary to draw breath and hope.

Soon, in that house I never expected to be, it's time for bed. There on the nightstand is a dried maple leaf, a candle, and a couple of framed photos. I lie back across the edge of the bed, naming off each vertebra, looking upward as my body stretches downward,  red hair trailing to the floor like a line of fire.  I smile up at stars that glitter like mica through the window, at unheard poetry that hides on the dark side of the moon, at the sun that warms another pillow far away; thankful for the journey here, the labor, the defeats, and the small victories that came with it.

Our memories are not the house we live in. They are inside us, all those memories —the laughter and sharing of friends, all the fun and adventures that will follow us home.  Home is the pillow on which you lay your dreams, brought out with just a word, a sure and steady, gentle touch.

Brigid

I could Soooooo. . . . .

A girlfriend in the Southwest made me this keychain, and with all the cards I got when I came home from the hospital, it made me smile.  

Thanks for all your kind words, texts (thanks, Mr. B.), and cards.  I'm feeling pretty good, but I can't lift anything heavier than a bag of flour for a couple more weeks. My BFF (retired Army, firefighter, and armed secret squirrel, basically a redheaded female version of PA State Cop) lives 15 minutes from me with her husband, so she's been making sure we're taken care of when Partner in Grime has had to be out of town.  I should be back to work in a couple more weeks, then a couple of weeks of catching up before retirement. 

  - Brigid

April 18, 2014

Eleven years ago on this date, Good Friday that year, he left me without saying goodbye.

I had just been out to visit him.  My brother had moved in with Dad some months ago.  The doctors told him he was in remission that last fall, he said, for how long, we did not know. But he had no job to return to with Defense cuts and couldn't afford to keep his home.  It was a good move, though, for Dad, relieving us of the expense of a full-time home health provider, as Dad couldn't live on his own, even as he still refuses to live with a family that would welcome him.  He'd outlived two children and two wives and said he would only leave his home when he ceases to breathe.

I visited as often as I could, using both vacation and sick time, there to provide for their care. There was always lots to do, meals to prepare and freeze, cleaning, flowerbeds, gutters, and the stocking of supplies. We made no trips but for short drives; he planned such overnight outings with the whole family for when I was away, but it was OK, those dinners with just he, my brother, and me. My brother and I could do things that needed to be done, and he liked having the time with just the two of us, sharing the memories of that home when Mom was still there. Between us, we got Dad's bills paid, the budget drawn up, and taxes completed, even if we ended up finishing it over the phone.

But my brother had concealed a secret.  Not being able to get insurance under the Affordable Care Act as the State's Exchange was having issues, too young for Tri-Care, and not being able to get into the V.A., he stopped treatment when cancer returned. It was a death sentence he didn't wish to burden us with, as there was no cure, just perhaps, a delay of the inevitable for a few weeks or months, at significant cost.

I understand now, in retrospect, knowing him as I do, yet I so wish he'd been able to share his burden with me.

But had I been able to talk to him one last time, I wouldn't have asked him about doctors or insurance care, where Dad's insurance info was, or what Dad did with the phone and cable bills, or even where the spare keys were. I would have simply told him I loved him and how much he meant to me, one more time.  But we never knew our last words would be just that. Our last words are often not said, our lives always coming up short for those measured statements which, through all of our brief utterances, were our lone and enduring hope. There is never enough time for those last words, of love, of faith, of fear, or regret.

The words not said hung in the air the days after he left. They were days that seemed like a lifetime, and yet seemed like only moments, perhaps because I don't know if I ever really slept in that time, or if, for a moment, time itself shifted, holding me down at the moment, as G-forces did long ago in a jet aircraft in a steeply banked turn.  Time held still for me, but for my brother, it had overtaken him and moved ahead. All of his things, placed into Dad's house, now to be moved again, to charity, to our homes, to our hearts, medals and coins, and books, and I probably don't want to know why he had a loaded flare gun hidden alongside his concealed carry piece. There were laughter and tears, there in so many pictures, of early days, and the freckled face of fatigue, memories of a strong, reliable man, the simple kind of man that is the cornerstone of great reputation, even if the world at large would not observe his passing with tears or trumpets.

There was so much to do, to organize, to communicate. So many people stopped at the house or church to pay their respects.  There were church friends, my brother's best friend, who came to the service even though he lost his own mother the day prior, high school friends, Submariner friends, and Don and several of the guys from Electric Boat. Then, before I knew it, a service, a eulogy I remember writing, but could not utter, the minister reading it instead of his own message, there as the Easter Lilies on the altar drooped towards him, as if listening.  There were words of Easter, of remembrance, works that will give us a sense of what meaning can be gained from pain and suffering, death and eternal life. Things some of us ignored for years, then, in moments of self-awareness, truly hit home.

It hit home for me when I looked out the window of the little memorial structure where he would receive his military honors before interment and saw the uniforms outside, just before raising their guns to the skies.  I heard the guns before they were ever fired, not as sound, but as a tremor that passed over my body the way you will see a flag unfurl, before even the wind that moves it is felt.

We often go through life with our eyes half shut, brain functioning well at idle, senses dormant, getting through our days on autopilot.  For many, this sort of life is comforting, welcoming.  Then, for some, not the incalculable majority, but many of us, there is a moment, a flash, when in a moment we truly know all that we've had, held there in the moment of its loss.

All that week long, it had rained, never really ceasing, only diminishing to a gentle mist now and again.  Yet as we arrived at that place, where guns would be raised, and taps would be played, the clouds moved aside as if paying their own respects.  The rain stopped as we pulled into the gates, and when we gathered, the sun came out.  As the officers stood at salute, all was silent, no rain, no wind, only stillness, the sunlight on the pooled water, now sleeping,

The guns fired their salute, taps were played, and the Lord's Prayer was uttered.  Then, one by one, hands were placed on a stone urn, one final goodbye that we could not bear to end, a moment of immobility that accentuated the utter isolation of this hilltop in which valor is laid to rest.

The moment I drew away, warm hand from cold stone, walking outside, the skies opened up again with heavy rain.  It was as if the heavens themselves wept, the rain enfolding us all the way home, mingling with our own tears. My hands clutched the three empty rounds that had been placed there, holding them so tight my nails dug into my flesh, not wanting to ever let them go.

Since that day, I have returned many a time to that hill, to the comfort of his ground, where the final stone is placed, to remember, the memorial being but the echo to his sound.

All around, I see the dead; in the small memorial at the spot in my hometown where two trains once collided,  in a sign erected in the memory of a local killed in a long-ago war. There's the little cross by the side of the road on my way home from work, where another young soul left us. How important these undistinguished little memorials. Every death is a memory that ends here, yet continues on, life flowing on, sustained by love and faith. Such is the lesson.

How thankful we are for these memorials, for the spirit's smoke that stays with us after the candle has been blown out.  As I heard the taps, I realized that they signified distance, heard there in that first echo. The dead were not sleeping; they were gone. When the final taps were played, I no longer heard the echo, but I will never forget it, for the memory helps us hold on. After a while, an echo is enough.

His was a death that arrived on Good Friday, and it was a life celebrated there and remembered here now, in the week of Easter. For that is what Easter was, and is, to our family.  It's remembrance. It's the remembrance of a death that brings us life. Of sacrifice, of knowing that we will not be forgotten. Of the hope that after darkness there is light, inky comfort in the unknown.
 - Brigid

Dare to Try

Just an update for those of you who aren't on my Facebook (I keep FB to people I  have known for many years or actually hang out with off of social media).  I had surgery last week for a tumor that was not supposed to be where it was, and the doc was concerned about cancer (which runs in my bio family).  So, several months of various tests, bloodwork, and specialists, and the surgery was done on Thursday last week.  I had a great doctor to perform the procedure (she ensured she would use only non-sale Harbour Freight tools), and I kept all original parts.  The 8.29 cm mass was removed and was benign, and the surrounding tissue was clear.  So THAT is a load off my mind, especially with retirement (and a change in insurance) coming up in June.  

So hopefully, in the next 3 weeks while I'm off to recover, I'll actually do some writing :-)

 With that, I'll leave you with some photos and a quote for the day:  

 Palma non sine pulvere.

 

Brigid

Range Entertainment

$108 for dog toys at PetsMart  - yawn

A shipping tube dropped on the way to the recycling bin

 - SCORE!

Ships Passing in the Night

Work has been crazy (and not in a good way), and I've had a head cold, so my brain hasn't figured out which way it's going. On the plus side, there are just two more months until retirement. 

A Sea that Never Freezes

We shall deal here with humble things, things not usually granted earnest consideration or at least not valued for their historical import. But no more in history than in painting is it the impressiveness of the subject that matters. The sun is mirrored even in a coffee spoon. . . .modest things of daily life, they accumulate into forces acting upon whoever moves within the orbit of our civilization
.— Sigfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (1948)

This winter, and even into spring, saw storms that had the city and most of the surrounding small towns come to a grinding halt.  Wind chills in the minus 20s and heavy, drifting, and blowing snow resulted in travel suspension within parts of the Midwest except for emergency vehicles and those seeking shelter. Out in the small towns, there was little movement, but those hardy souls wouldn't let frostbite and politicians tell them what to do.

We have another round of storms forecast today, and I have the blinds and what curtains we have closed against the cold. Since the house is atop a walkout basement with windows above the ground level,  the huge windows on the south side of the house that look out onto the Spruce trees only have some antique lace, making for a lovely view but not maintaining the home's warmth.  Even with the little heater next to the desk, the chill eddy of cold licks in at my skin as I go to get a warmer sweater and some thicker wool socks.

One needs to be prepared for such things. A few days ago, it was in the 70s before plunging again, another sleight of hand from the greatest of magicians, Mother Nature; Machiavellian's stroke on the part of that foe, a new battle towards which it channels ancient wounds, inflicting its grievance upon the land. It will likely arrive to do battle when you least expect it when the prolonged blow of the dark and ice sinks through the skull and lays its claim deep on the bones of the winter landscape. It will not be a day and night safe for man or beast.

Other than the sound of my husband puttering in the basement as he took a vacation today to do some home repairs, it's intensely quiet. No birds, no clattering of cars starting up. Just the sound of the incessant wind, a long, broad hum, as if through wires. There is little noise or movement, but the whine of shop equipment, maybe a half block away, is the sound sticking to the cold air as if snow on a branch. Then, the sound of a bell, a wedding scheduled for that day in the corner church.

It's funny; I'm perfectly fine, holing up at home for days with nothing but books, a kitchen, and some tools.  But tell me I can't drive to the store or run to the library, and I suddenly get cabin fever, peering out the window every so often, like a bird from a cage that fidgets with feathered annoyance.

I also noticed something else, something a little nicer.  My knee does not hurt.  After the fall that tore out my meniscus and the resultant surgery and physical therapy, my knee hurt even years later.  After six months, it was bearable, but there was always a twinge,  much worse in cold weather.  Now, 15 years post-injury, after adopting a serious military-style weight/boxing/cardio program,  I sit here and realize it doesn't hurt.

It's not the pain that bothered me, I've dealt with pain.  It was being unable to run, jump, and MOVE quickly and without effort. It was crutches, then a cane, then just walking with a bit of a limp when the air pressure dropped and it ached.  It was sliding back in time, back to when I wasn't confident in my physical abilities when I was just a skinny, quiet little kid who was picked last for dodgeball because, frankly, I'd rather be inside reading a book than the teacher would think was inappropriate for someone my age.

It wasn't the pain, it wasn't an injury hat in the grand scheme of things, wasn't very serious.  I realized at this point that what is dire profundity to the very young is usually just "been there done that" to those of us in middle age, which is still preferable to the six-foot deep and eighteen-foot square reality that faces us all eventually.

No,  it wasn't torn and missing cartilaginous tissue and the wobbly feeling I had every time I tried to use that leg.  It was losing a foothold I'd stretched so far and hard for. It was realizing that we treat our bodies with a sense of entitlement we may eschew in other things as if breath was some plaything given to us just for our own pleasure. I look down on the small scars as if speaking to them. You will let me run, you will let me climb, you will let me explore and make mistakes and play. Now, I can't walk up a flight of stairs. When our body fails us, it's like a personal betrayal.

It's much as if seeing a beloved old building each and every day, an old church perhaps, the stones so sturdy that time had not displaced it, could not ever displace it, not all of time could have.  Then, one day, you drive on past, and it's simply gone, razed, and replaced by a shabbily built storefront that won't withstand a good wind.

I sat here in this spot fifteen years ago, during another storm, crutches up against the wall, the curtains drawn, as the pain in my body drove for an instant upon me, the thorns of slain flowers.  On that day, I wished to be anywhere but sitting in intense pain. The sky was spilling snow, the only light there was laying low to the ground as if held down by the wind itself, unable to rise and move away. It was a day in which I could only sit immobile as the wind howled, dreaming of an Arctic landscape, of a sea that never freezes, and a forever green landscape.

It's easy to throw a pity party, and I was on the verge on that day I was in a motorized scooter in WalMart, one place I swore I would never be.  But in that exact moment, as Partner in Grime smiled down at me, having been with me without fail since I got hurt, canceling his whole Christmas to get me home and tend to me, I realized all I had. I also learned that by putting the small end of the crutch out in front of me like a knight's lance, I could knock the Billy Bass out of the cart of the guy with no teeth.  Oh, sorry, accident, really. SCORE!

I am who I am through hurt, pain, and failures, and because of them,

Because of that, I know what is important. And that is all the endurance of which the mind is capable, of which the flesh has an appetite. That has kept me going on nights when all I could do was sit and hold a small faded photo, eyes tightly shut, as if the light was diminished by its own grief, leaving only a lone huddled shadow upon the wall, pale and fading. That kept me going when fate swiped a paw at me, and I swiped back harder, EPR's steady, left hand tight on the yoke, planting that aircraft on a piece of hard ground as small as my fear.

I get up from my chair and open the curtains up.  I'll have a higher heat bill, but for now, I want to look out and up.  I look at the sun I've not seen in two days as the fierce wind hollowed the remaining light out of the sky, the light now holding a quality beyond heat and illumination.   In the distance, the sound of a church bell, a deliberate note blowing free, like snow from a winter branch. Somewhere within, a priest lifts the Host in a series of shimmering gleams like warm rain that falls from the sky as vows are spoken, and what is broken is healed.
 - Brigid

March 17 2024 Ireland

Ireland.  The land is rugged and it is raw, morning breaking with a crash of spray against a sea cliff, days stretching longer than the beaches that lie quietly in wait for a footstep to make an impression on them.

There in the sand were small bits of history, small stones, a piece of bone that appeared to have been carved, and a perfect, pristine shell that was both delicate and strong. Water and history, two elements of life that draw me in deeply; draw me back to such places. Part of my childhood was spent on the shores of a body of water in the West, where we stayed in a little cabin with a view of the water years before Californians discovered it and developers took over the place, building vast condos that blocked out the sun.

My brother and I would get up while it was still dark and march down to the water's edge, hoping to get there to see the dawn explode over the water. I could spend hours there, just watching the way the water shaped itself around the rocks and me, the gentle waves moving against the shore, like breathing. In the bright, cold water, there would be all sorts of strange creatures, all sorts of mysteries.

We'd wade along the edges, gingerly looking while not harming anything that was there, hoping to find a prehistoric shell to take home, knowing that at some time, all of the land where our family homesteaded had once been part of this ocean.  We occasionally found bits and pieces of things, some strange, some so very familiar.

Many of you have seen a sand dollar. They're commonly sold in souvenir stores. But what you see is only the remaining skeleton of a living sea creature. When living, the sand dollar is covered with fine hair-like cilia covering tiny, soft, and almost purple spines. But the remaining shell is beautiful, fragile, and white. The essential essence of what this creature was.

We'd come home at the end of an adventure, our pockets full of small rocks, shells, and artifacts of the day. I felt somehow at home with these tiny bits of the ancient land, though I felt as if I was living in an alien world in the small eddy currents of their homes, among creatures that were so different from me; somehow, I knew I belonged there. At night, we'd build a fire and sit and listen to the lapping of the waves; dreams of my future filled my head. The sound of the water, growing and swelling in rhythm to my heartbeat, accompanies the laughing and roasted marshmallows, the joys of a night on the water under open stars.

The rocky, rugged coast of Northern Island took me back there, the rush of the water an affirmation of what draws me to search and discover. It takes me back to the taste of salt on my lips, that of rain or tears, only the years remember. The water rushes, then waits, as I do, moving in, retreating, watching, still waiting. Remembering everything past, hoping for everything good in the future, in a bone-deep calm that belies the deep ache in my muscles as I climb up a trail that leads to cliffs hundreds of feet above.

There at the top, a view, an expanse that is as untouched and unchanged as what drove me here in the first place. There's few other people, the rest taking the bus back the short distance, just a couple of us, strangers but kindred spirits, not speaking, simply looking outward. The others don't dare the height, the edge, not with the wind that day, but we do, not feeling the fear until afterward, only feeling alive, on the wind, the smell, and the taste of the longing to simply be here.

On my last trip to Ireland, while overseas for a professional speaking engagement (with a free weekend to play tourist), I took an afternoon off to visit the Trinity College Library. Specifically, I wanted to look at the Book of Kells, which is hundreds of years old. It is in a massive hall, watched over by the white busts of philosophers.

There in the dizzying array of centuries of thought how very close I felt to them, and I wondered what they would think of us today. People so different yet not so much. Priests, wanton victims, lovers, students. A flock of beleaguered human beings rushing through life with little more than spare words of text, our lives left, not to handwritten words that flow from veins that open within us, but to small snippets of meaningless text, words thrown out into the electronic atmosphere without thought to discourse or what meaning they leave in their wake.

Then, the Book of Kells, painstakingly recorded in colors of the earth, was preserved for 1200 years. I stood transfixed by their vision, which in their Latin told me nothing but that someone of great faith had been here and recorded his heart, a message that, though I could not translate accurately, I could never fail to understand.

Too soon, the trip was over, and it was time to go home. I will make the trek up above the sea one last time before my flight back to the States is set to leave. I will return to a happy dog and the friend who watched him.  I'll try and recreate some of the dishes I dined on there in historic inns, there in a quiet kitchen, a calendar on the wall, on the counter perhaps a bit of loose tea spilled, a pen and a journal by the window. The house holds its traces of me, assuming I will come back and, if not, that at least I would be remembered by those who share my table,  even if not related by blood.

But for now, a few more hours, a few more artifacts of time I stole from the past, flirting with the ancients, rugged rocks, the smell of peat and coal, a land brushed with snow, burnished with the traces of those that went before. Traces that say remember me; remember this, for in it you will find yourself and leave a piece of your heart behind.

There, on top of a sea green cliff, I will throw out a rock to watch it splash down far below, as above, I watch above from a strong, yet fragile, light shell that houses this old soul. The rock flies through the hindrance of the deepest sleep, through the stiff fabric of the wind, into the warm sea.

It's only a rock, only a bit of artifact of the past that holds in it, not the prolonged burden of time that too many embrace as they age, but the bright colored fluent movement of youth, the dancing heels of those days of risk and glory.  Perhaps the days of my youth are gone, as is the rock,  yet the feel of its absoluteness remains in my hands, in me, long after the wind goes silent.

Too, too soon, it is time to head back. Clouds kiss the top of the hills, the rocks knitting up the small tendrils of fog into shawls that drape us as we hike on down. Layers and layers, the sea cliffs lie. Down, descending through those layers of clouds, layers and layers of memory. Memories of many miles walked upon such shores, from that first sound of a wave in my childhood to this, the span seems endless.

Till we meet again Ireland, Thar gach ni eile.

Views From a Deer Stand

The rain hangs like sheets, whipped by the wind, the air as sodden as fabric. I can't see 100 yards, but I don't need to. I might be treading water today but won't be hunting.

Deer camp in a rain storm. The deer aren't moving now. and neither will I. It came up quickly, things in the high country don't meander in slowly. One minute the sky was a pale grey blue, a tuft of cotton building up against the peak. The next, all if that water just emptied out of that gentle hue, sluicing from the sky as I rushed for shelter, too far from the camp to get under real cover.

So I sat and waited. It's easier when you're not alone.

Last year the deer hunt weather was perfect, clear, and cold in the morning. We'd crawl out of our sleeping bags in the dark and didn't get in again until almost dark, putting together the evening's libations. There wasn't a TV in sight, no computer, no cell phones. We played board games and told stories of a hunt in Africa, of love and children, and just how many bowls of venison chili we could eat without exploding.

Waiting out the wet and the dark is easier when you have friends. You can play cards or always do that shadow puppet thing on the tent wall ("Hey, that looks like a Grizzly head - Holy *&#* grab the rifle!). You can laugh and hoist those small, thick glasses of heavy amber that you never appreciated when you were 20, but hunters sip with reverent communion.
 

But when you're alone, it is different. Time drapes across your senses, the water and the wind drowning out more than the hunt, but that heightened state of awareness that is the first kiss of perception. Then comes the rain, and you settle back, knowing nothing is going to happen soon, no matter how much you wish for it. Anticipation is the best part of anything and the rain only wets the desire to see that which waits for you.

Stay put or leave, the decision quivers there as I sit under a poncho, trying to look more like a rock and less like a lightning rod. The water washes the landscape bright, trembling with heat, and the branches lie like gifts on the forest floor, a place both pagan and serene. With a splash of light, the late afternoon sun breaks free, warming me. Sun rays dance on that small piece of skin peeking beneath the camo, such a small space of flesh, evocative of all lost nights and transcended delights, flowing there like honey in sunlight.

 

Should I stay or should I go?

Despite the tales to the contrary, deer do move in the rain. Not the torrential downpour, but in that quiet trickle that is the end of a violent argument between cloud and sky, the deer will move, sometimes becoming less wary, figuring you are in someplace near the fire instead of creeping on sodden leaves to spring. Like men, deer seek comfort, seeking out cool havens in the hot weather and snug shelter when the cold is brutal. They don't like blustery winds, but in this gentle rain on the storm's backside, they will be out if only I am patient.

 

But it won't be an easy hunt, for their reluctance to come out and play in the rain is not about discomfort. The deer's most effective defense mechanisms, the ears, and the nose, are less than effective in the rain. Your movements are muffled when everything is wet, the scent is washed out, and you are not carrying well. They will be in the thickest cover they can find, that big buck relying on his eyesight to see you hunting him. But the playing field is more leveled, as you aren't going to hear him unless he is equipped with a Brinks alarm that will go off as he bolts.

There's a reason many hunters just chose to wait it out in camp. You're not going to climb into a blind and wait for him to come out to see what the rain brought; you will seek what you want. You're going to stalk, in slow, methodical, and deliberate movement, that which you desire. I think about these things as I wait.

Still I hesitate, waiting for some sign, waiting for a sound from the woods, like music moving, the sound of deer creeping past my camp, the cry of a jay startled by their presence, the sound a cloistered bell in the woods. The others had already gone home as I waited, pacing their fleeing shadows because to not wait was to admit that I had made the wrong choice in being here in the first place.

Just a few more minutes, as the sky clears. I will wait, but not too long, knowing that to wait is often to lose. Time and tide wait for no man or woman; sometimes, as you sit in quiet comfort of what you think is yours to keep, it slips away from you. One moment, you're just sitting, listening to the voice of the woods, the Cicada sound of the earth spinning in space, thinking that although you have no wish to change things, all is right in the world. But someone else is watching you, contemplating that moment when you must act or remain forever silent, and you don't. You don't even notice they're gone, only the fading smell of sweet musk in the air, writhing like cold smoke in their wake.

In that hesitation of inattention, you're left with nothing but the breathing of darkness and the cold surrounding it. Nothing behind or ahead of you but the heavy heartbeat of silence you never conceived of there in the systole of a summer night. A moment in which, as the song by Hinder says, you "shoulda woulda coulda," but it's too late to act.

As a raindrop drips from a tree branch, I touch my tongue to my lips, tasting sweet salt. I've waited long enough, and I gather my things, creeping from my sheltered spot, firearm in hand, out into the drawn green shades of approaching sunset. The air has gone cold, the wind stroking with a touch that's neither caress nor dismissal. Under my gear, a murmur of silk, breath a panting whisper. If I stay here, I'll have nothing but cold and empty hands.

I stand slowly, walking out gingerly, looking and stopping. Which way is the wind coming from? How would they have gone? I move steadily out into the shadows, a slow release of silence like protracted desire. Look. Stop. Take a deep breath. Decide. A whole forest is in front of me, and no one is holding me back. The whitetail is out there, and soon, in those woods, the sound of our need will move toward a black powder crescendo, released like a held breath.

I see a fresh scrape. I light a match and blow it out to test the wind. It blazes like a dying star, drowning in the shadow of my passing as I disappear into the trees.
 - Brigid

Binding Us Together

"Everything worth meaning is made up of so many small parts, its moments, its words, its acts, the skin and bone, and the nucleus within us that contains its own fire somewhere deep inside. We're our own walking fate, and we're our own little miracles, the atoms from which we're made, not so different from the atoms of the earth, the air, the water, all of us formed from that blazing nucleus of the stars - Heaven, binding us together."

- The Book of Barkley by L.B. Johnson

Things We Dream Of

The house I grew up in wasn't huge. There was only one bathroom with a shower, which required an early morning schedule worthy of a battle commander. There was also just one other smaller bath with a sink and a toilet off the garage, where we could come in and clean up after we tinkered with tools and cars.

I had my own room, being the only girl in the family, with a window that looked out onto an apple tree that since has been cut down. I climbed out of that window more than once, dropping into the darkness on the ground in silence. Not to sneak and party or any other mischief the older kids were up to, but to simply get out of the house, out into the outdoors, sitting on the grass out back, watching the stars on those nights when I was restless. I'd think of things that I'd dream of if only I could sleep. A small, tidy home and shop of my own someday, a good man, a big dog, and all the popcorn I could eat.

But as life renews itself, so do dreams. Living with just Barkley in a humongous house full of expensive things I had to work doubly hard to pay for, coming home late to the one that patiently waited, something dawned on me one night. My dog Barkley didn't care where we lived, what we owned, or who would judge us for that.  All he knew was unbridled living in the moment and following your heart. He appreciated the things that held no form, that bore no name, the glint of sun off of a pond, a walk in the woods, one last look at the night sky as the stars finally faded. As we walked and Barkley went into full point on a plastic deer in someone's yard in that old subdivision, I thought about how he was also pointing me to the things that matter in life - loyalty, devotion, and love without strings attached.

So I sold it at a loss, with the market tanking, but I didn't care. I wanted a life where I still worked hard, but work wasn't what defined me. I wanted a home, a house that looked less like a magazine and more like a life. I wanted the sort of place my Dad would smoke a pipe in, with high wooden beams, old tools, and a place to use them. I wanted a house for a writer, a retreat for the dreamer.

People say that as we grow we change.. I don't see it quite that way, but rather that we become what we always were but have changed, molded, or kept hidden to satisfy others. Changing our true nature to fit some preconceived notion of how the happy, successful person would live or with whom. With the changes in my life, with each friendship I've made and maintained over time, people more like myself and less like who I was expected to spend time with, I'd become more true to myself. It's as if with each change, whether with loss or with happiness, with challenge, with new friends and new discoveries, the layers peel away like the thin skin of an onion, exposing nerve endings to the chill air, awakening something that lay dormant for too long.

With that in mind, I loaded up that car with what I could carry, my dog in the backseat. I was happy to be where I was, with whatever changes came. We wandered, he and I, until we found what was for us: home.

When I showed a professional associate the picture for the place that would finally become home with my husband, I was met with, "You're going to LIVE there? It's so small!!  If I had your income, I'd be buying one of those big houses on the lake. Where are you going to shop? What are your neighbors going to think".

I don't care what the neighbors think. I quit changing who I was to conform to society a long time ago, a foreigner to the immutable laws that TV and greed seem to have placed upon people. I simply wanted to come home, grab a tennis ball, and go play with my dog in the yard. I didn't want to come home to a huge cavernous dwelling where I rattled around with the stranger I was becoming, heaving and sighing with the work of keeping that life up, uttering the sounds of someone engaged in a battle without arms.

During my first summer here, the air was still warm with life and need. I looked around; I looked down at small things, green plants enduring in hard ground to find light and air, like stars amidst a night sky. I looked up straight into the sun, and for that brief moment, when I must turn away, I could see a pure, clear circle illuminating everything. I saw my shadow, and that of a black Lab, with a shape that was us, yet didn't define us, simply a form, in this place in time, following what was truly within us, wherever we went.

Life in essence, remains the same, even as it changes, these existing things have always been true. It's a small flower, small spots of fresh life, unheard poetry on the hidden side of a planet spinning in space. It's an articulated bark of welcome; it's the wag of a tail. It's darkness, light, and a great thirst to quench before winter's darkness, which is one of permanence, things you can not hold but that fill up empty spaces in life much better than material possessions.

What would we be were we shed of all those material things, of our possessions, our titles, of our names? The things in the forest have no name; they have no earthly riches, yet they still exist; they are still profound in their creation. The creatures of the forest have no titles and survive based on skill and cunning, not their credit limit or the car they drive. The plants grow and thread and seek light, just as man, when shedding that which is unnecessary, sees the light that is often truth.

On the wall of my Dad's shop area was an old picture of a bullfight.  One he bought for the house as a newlywed, which Mom took one look at and sent to the garage. We teased him a lot about it, and just looking at it brought him and my mom to laughter that ended with a kiss and a knowing smile. Yet, in looking at it today, I see the bull not as a shape, with form and depth, a mass of muscle and bone inherent with the capacity to hurt, but simply a creature knowing what it needed and willing to sacrifice so very much to keep it.

Behind his house, where deer once wandered down from the mountains, delicate and untouchable as smoke, leaving only tender footprints in the flower beds to mark their passing, stood a Big Box Mart or two that blotted out what was left of the timber and much of the sun. I remember my Dad watching them cut down the trees, with eyes like pieces of a broken plate, steadfast in his refusal to sell, as most of the neighbors did. This house was his home, a dwelling where he raised his kids and outlived two beloved wives, a place he would only leave when he was ready on his own terms. 

When he finally sold the place, ready for the small comforts and safety of Assisted Living, my bedroom remained just as it was in my youth.  The walls were still yellow, my favorite color, with a few stuffed animals in the corner, a poster on the closet door, and a music stand.

Mom's kitchen was unchanged except for the refrigerator, once covered with childlike artwork, finally laid bare. The wall behind it in the family room that once framed drawings from grade school and ribbons from the science fair was now covered with commendations and more complex ribbons, pictures of airplanes and submarines, and the children of the family, proudly swearing an oath to their country in a solemn moment of choice and service, each and every one of us.

Many of the memories there in his home are happy ones; some are bittersweet.  There are the small ceramic things my Mom made, still carefully dusted years after she was dust herself. There is the teddy bear by my bed, showing the signs of wear from when I came home from the hospital without my daughter and cried myself to sleep in his fur night after night while my Dad listened, helpless in the next room, wanting only for me to be happy again.

When I walked in that last time, those memories remained, though they were dampened by the years, overlaid with other memories of happiness.  As they say, you can't go home again, but we, by our nature, try. It changes, and it doesn't, it's the warmth of a kitchen, a flag flying out front, old tools in the garage and the skills passed on by a Father. It's four walls and new family members who will gather and remember those who are gone.

In those first weeks after Barkley left us, I would step up to my own porch. I desperately wanted to hear the soft "woof" as Barkley waited in the kitchen for me to step in. But I could only walk in, in that utter quiet that was now the house, sensing those who were absent, who inhabited this place but existed now only as ghosts of my past, living on the breath of memory.

I stood outside the door, hearing the hushed wind and hand on the doorknob. I was hesitant to open the door to every memory and more hesitant to leave them behind. I stood there silently, my presence not detected by dogs, forever silent, motionless, trying to blend in with the house, the dark wood, and trees, listening to the living presence of a home, all the lives and love and heartache that went into it, that formed these four walls, that now formed me.

I listened, as a churchgoer does, to chants in ancient languages that no one understands but listens to anyway, the words a peace that flows like water. There was no bark, but that of the trees and the baleful sound of a wind that spoke the name of one departed. I listened for things I'd dreamed of if only I could sleep.

I opened up the door to go on in. I had no words for what I was feeling. I had no name for the quiet that waited inside. But that was OK. There are no words for the shafts of light between the trees, of the unity of earth and roots and small creatures that are born and die as food for the soil. There are no names for the rocks that direct a stream's flow, for the fur and leaves that line an eagle's nest. Yet they are, and always will be. Strong. Necessary. Waiting.

 - Brigid