Between a Decision and a Hard Place

So I had this brilliant idea in the fall to go back to school.  My original idea was to go in and finish one of the Associates Degrees.  I learned eleven years ago that higher math was not only something to be avoided, it appeared to be something invented by the devil himself.  So, I decided I wanted to see about maybe completing an AA instead of the AS I was x math credits short of.  Then, I thought, perhaps something in the humanities, even though case management is something I have done before and while it is a service it isn’t really one I wanted to do for the rest of my life.  But I wanted to complete something.  I am, after all, still technically on Christmas vacation from 1989, my senior year of high school.  I was flunking out.  I didn’t want to put up with the humiliation of not graduating.

I have felt like a quitter for years. My parents prophesy come true; too lazy to do school work, too lazy to graduate.

Now, however, I am finding a huge problem.  Our childcare situation fell through the first day and we have been relying on my mother-in-law S to take care of Bunny and Nunkee while we are in class.   Bunny attends Head Start and Nunkee stays with Grammy S all day.

Not only is this hard on us, my kids are taking a hit as well.  Nunkee seems to be the most affected.

I know my mother-in-laws parenting style.  It’s based on neglect. It follows the edict of; turn the television on as soon as the girls walk in the door and leave it on all day to keep them out of your hair, give Nunkee whatever she screams for, set no expectation of manners or boundaries, allow her to be a tyrant, let her play for hours on end in the tub unsupervised, feed her whatever comes out of a package you don’t have to heat up, tell her what a brat she is for acting like a kid, and do this all in a singlewide trailer house owned and lived in by a man who chain smokes and is supposed to only drink on the days after he drives Bunny to Head start if S is doing something else.  I just found that little tidbit out last week.

What the hell was I thinking? What the hell was I thinking?

I shouldn’t even feel torn about quitting school again.

This morning, when G.M and I were driving the girls over to S Bunny said something in the car about Ted and Ralph.  Ted and Ralph are two bachelor brothers who are friends with S’s roommate.  Neither has ever married.  They live together.  Bunny says it’s fun to play with Ted ‘cause she tickles him.  He tickles her too.

I have never met the man, but I know S was molested by her own brother and the same brother then molested her daughter.  So, if my daughter’s are at risk, will she be able to defend them?  I think the answer to that is patently obvious.  So, this morning on the way to Grandmother’s house I had a long talk with my girls about touching.  Where no grown up should touch them.  How no grownup should ask for them to touch in places bathing suits cover.  What they should say to that grownup if that grownup tried to touch them. “Yell, Stop touching me! Kick them! Then run and TELL!”

I should not have to have such talks with my girls before dropping them off at their Grandmother’s house.  Don’t get me wrong, the Talk About Touching talk is a very important and unfortunately necessary talk every parent should have with their children.  But I don’t like knowing that the odds of their grandmother protecting them, or preventing that situation if it arose are not good at all.  She didn’t prevent it from happening to her own daughter, why would she prevent it from happening to mine? 

The semester is almost over.  

I am a fool if I keep my daughters with their Grandmother.  I can’t be 100% sure they are not at risk.

In the state of Montana, in order for a parent to qualify for state assisted child care one or both parents have to be working a total of 30 hours a week while attending school. Jobless economy aside this means one of us would have to work weeknights and one would have to work weekends so the other could watch the kids.  Which could work out for us…if employers, were they hiring, willing to work around our school schedules.  And if we couldn’t get that ideal schedule and both of us had to work at the same time in the evenings, when childcare centers are closed, or on the weekends, when childcare centers are closed, who would watch our children?  Oh yeah.  My mother-in-law.   

I am ashamed there is a selfish part of me that doesn’t want to give up on school.  Well, maybe not entirely selfish because I am looking down the road at the job marketability picture.  And I would never keep my girls in this questionable situation just because I didn’t want to give up school.  It is just that I am afraid if I give it up again I will never get a chance to go back.  I already had to beg to the financial aid appeal board to get financial aid re-instated because of past failed math classes.

My mind goes into “What if?” panic mode and all I seem to see I are the obstacles. I forget sometimes that I have faith.  It is an easy thing to have, but it is also an easy thing not to have.

My husband is really doing well in his cabinetry class.  I would like to see him go beyond just getting a certificate.  I would love for him to be able to thrive in the class and grow himself as a person and craftsman.  To find that love for personal growth and education that has been so scorned in his life previously.

I meet with my advisor tomorrow.  I will tell her then of my situation.  I hope for a work study miracle for both my husband and myself.  That way we could work on campus, meet the requirements and get our babies into a licensed childcare center.  I am also planning on writing a letter to the state childcare agency in Helena voicing my complaint against their decision to not allow fulltime students trying to better their family’s lives access to childcare assistance.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t like having to rely on anyone else to pay my bills.  This is just the reality of poverty.

I cannot continue putting my girls in this situation day after day.  Today, my mother-in-law told me Nunkee had come out once when her bathtub water got cold and asked for a reheat.  She told me she obliged her then Nunkee went back to playing.  After a while, S noticed she was quiet and went to check on her thinking she was putting all the washcloths off the shelf into the tub.  No.  Nunkee had fallen asleep in the tub.

I don’t see my children through my eyes.  I see my children through my heart and hearts see things very differently.  Hearts definitely have a biased view.  Yet my heart and my common sense are telling me I am insane if I leave them there.

Two weeks until the semester is over. Two weeks.

I Will Not Be LIke Scrooge This Year, I Will Not Be Like Scrooge This Year…

It is that time a year again. The Holiday Season. The season of celebration, joy, family time and school vacation. From the Christian standpoint, it is the celebration of the birth of Christ. Even though Christ was born in the spring, and it was the Church’s idea to muck up pagan celebration of the winter solstice, yet try to keep the holiday spirit by still giving them something to party about in the dead of winter.

Technicalities aside I have over the past years grown more and more surly in regards to the Christmas season. I know it is in part because, having as many kids as we do can lead to financial strain especially since my children can never seem to zero in on just that one ideal thing they want for Christmas and instead tell me something different every time I ask what they want.

The curmudgeon in me has toyed with the idea of cancelling Christmas. Telling the kids we had become Jehovah’s Witness or something. Or better yet, celebrating in January after all the sales were on. I know the revolution would be on then, as the majority of my children are old enough to know better and the two year old would wage war just because it is fun.

I got a call again this year. From the school counselor asking if our family could use help with gifts for Christmas. My children’s names have gone on giving trees in the past. We’ve been the ‘Charity Family’ in the past. One year, and honestly, it was the most bountiful Christmas our whole family ever had because this group included parents in the mix, our family was chosen to have Christmas provided and the literal pickup load of gifts that was delivered to our house was overwhelming. I at once felt extreme gratitude and a deep sense of shame. My kids were thrilled. All they saw was the amount. They didn’t know the cost of receiving that bounty. I made a vow that year.

Someday, somehow, I would be in a position one day to turn around and do that for someone else.

We are in no way really able to pay it forward in that manner at this point, but I have set a goal that within the next year we will be. God willing.

Needless to say, after politely thanking the school counselor, I refused. Not because we couldn’t use the help but because in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t necessary. I hate having to take charity in order for my family to have the American equivalent of an ideal happy Christmas. It pisses me off. Why should Christmas be so damned materialistic? Besides, I have a couple sisters who give them toys and clothes, they have two grandmothers who give them underwear and stuff from the dollar store. It’s not as if they go with nothing. They don’t get much, and what they get isn’t expensive, but they get something.

Over the years my children have amassed an accumulation of toys they soon lose all appreciation for and this bothers me, especially if it is something they had really asked for. When I see it, discarded on their bedroom floor two weeks later getting stepped on I am furious.

What I would love to see most in my children is a sense of gratitude and an appreciation with what they do get. It infuriates me no end that our society is based mostly on consumerism, materialism and acquisition instead of gratitude, gratefulness and generosity. It infuriates me even more that I find myself buying into the desire time and again. Christmas holds a feeling of obligation to purchase and appease.

As a child I lived December with that daily buzz of anticipation. Only twenty-four days to go! Twenty-three! I wanted to decorate the tree as soon as December arrived, and my mother, following traditional Episcopalian calendar usually didn’t decorate until Christmas Eve week then left the tree up until mid-January. By mid-January I was sick of seeing it. I am more of a rip-it-down the day after Christmas type myself. The thrill of gift opening was such a brief moment after the whole month’s buildup that it has always had an air of disappointment. Like a promise of fulfillment gone sour, I just want it gone!

Would that we could celebrate twelve days of Christmas with a small something every day! I have thought of doing this often…and with the rest of life whirling around my head, hurricane style, I never have gotten to that.

Don’t get me wrong, this Christmas above all others will be taken with extra gratitude. After the accident I would be a complete fool not to count every blessing.

But how to treat this holiday without letting my inner Scrooge come out? Yes, I know. It isn’t about material things. It’s about family, time together, yada, yada.

I try to make it magical for my kids. Often though, my heart isn’t in it. They are siblings and siblings will find the most miniscule things to fight and argue about constantly, whether it is a holiday or not. Frankly, it chafes like a burr under a saddle blanket. I find more annoyances along with the holiday performance anxiety.

I

still struggle with how to focus myself toward the positive around this holiday. I try to keep my irritation from coming out my mouth. I want to celebrate with my children, not be the prime poster child for Holiday Bitch Queen of the Year.

I am looking for something in this holiday and just not finding it. et, I keep looking. For my children’s sake, I keep looking. With enough trial and error perhaps one day I will find it. The peace on Earth, good will toward men. That elusive Christmas Spirit. I think I have figured out one thing about this holiday, though. I think I understand why people celebrate with spiked eggnog!

When Life Hands You Car Wrecks, Part Two

People came running. I was trying to get my kids to stop screaming to see if they were hurt or not. Bird was talking.

“Mom, was that a car wreck? What happened?”

“Bird, are you hurt? Your sisters, are they hurt? Don’t move, Bird, we gotta wait for help!”

A man’s voice, talking to my son.

“Can you unbuckle buddy?” the man asks.

“Don’t move them!” I say. All my first aid training that I have ever taken teaches that unless there is smoke or fire DO NOT move the accident victims. Hidden injuries of the skull or spine means moving them could kill them.

“Mom! My head hurts! What happened? Where’s Birdie and Bunny? Are they okay? I’m scared.”

“We’ve been in an accident, it’s ok. I think they are ok.”

A man and woman leaning in front of the sunroof. Some guy asking me if I can turn the ignition off. I try to reach and my neck screams in protest. But I can feel my arms and legs, I think it’s not broken.

People everywhere. this woman is telling this man to try and get Butterfly out. I hear someone helping Bird out of the back but I can’t see! I think I ask about my kids in the back, someone tells me they are ok.

This woman! She is telling this man how to try and pull my daughter out, my daughter who keeps saying her head hurts, who keeps asking me the same questions, My God! I think, Head injury.

I tell them again to wait until medical personnel arrive. This woman and man act as if I am not even speaking! They are trying to move my daughter even though she is telling us her head hurts. I try to get my seatbelt undone. It’s stuck. Anger welling up in me again. Fear for my daughter. I try to say the one prayer that sticks with me from childhood, the one that used to calm my fear, the Lord’s prayer and my head hurts and I can only think, “I don’t remember the lyrics!” Later I will remember it was the words I forgot, it wasn’t a damned song.

“Ma’am!” I snarl at this woman, “Are you a nurse?” I can hear sarcasm in my voice. She stutters a moment then tells me “I’m a Nurse Practitioner.“ I know this woman has just lied to me. Unless she is a Nurse Practitioner with an overblown hero complex. Trained nurses identify themselves immediately in situations like this and a trained nurse would know not to move someone saying their head hurt. I check again for blood on Butterfly, looking at the roof under her head. See none.

“Mom, I’m scared. My head hurts. Where’s the kids? Are they alright? What happened? Mom! Are you okay? Mom! Am I okay? Mom! What happened? How did we wreck? I’m scared!”

These people are messing with my daughter, trying to get her to crawl out. This time anger in defense.

“YOU PEOPLE NEED TO BACK THE FUCK OFF AND LEAVE HER ALONE UNTIL MEDICAL PERSONNEL ARRIVE!” I roar.

“They’re here! Right here!” says the woman and now a new man comes in, wearing a fireman’s helmet. Hero Nurse goes away. Good riddance. My younger kids are pulled from the car without a scratch. Someone tells me they are sitting in a patrol car and are fine. I send up a prayer of thanks.

Every ten seconds Butterfly is asking me how we wrecked, if she’s ok, if I’m ok, if the kids are ok. One firefighter asks her questions as the others stabilize the car. Ask me questions. Did I lose consciousness? No. My name. Age. Ask Butterfly what day it is. She doesn’t know. Where she goes to school. She tells them. Good! I think. Maybe just a concussion. She can move her arms and legs.

Then she asks me a new question.

“Mom! Did we have any of the dogs with us?”

Oh no. Copper!

“Hey!” I yell to the general outside and upright world. “We had a small dog with us, has anyone seen him?”

A woman (Hero Nurse?) tells me she saw him run away. Did she really or is this just some ploy to keep the traumatized accident victims from stressing any more?

Somebody asks me for his description and then they tell us to shut our eyes as they cut the windshield from the dash. the firefighter is back with blankets for butterfly, she is starting to shiver from shock.

I hear the firemen start a debate about how best to cut through the wreck to get to us. I can’t believe they seem to be arguing about it, I want to scream at them to just hurry the fuck up and open this tuna can to get my kid out but my head is throbbing and my arms and legs are going numb from hanging upside down in the seatbelt.

Butterfly fires off her repetitive questions again and I answer them again. They try a couple of cuts with the Jaws of Life hydraulic cutter. I stare at the worlds largest shears cutting through the metal of my sunroof. They decide that will take too long, however, then tell me they are going to jack the car up to better reach us and that we will feel it jerking. Every movement brings agony, but it is soon over. A fireman brings a couple more blankets to cover Butterfly and me and, while a fireman shields my daughters body from the sparks they use some rotary metal cutter to cut the roof supports at the car body and lay the roof open.

They take Butterfly first and I am so, so grateful I see no blood where she had lain. They stabilize her and move her to the ambulance while a firefighter comes in to brace his shoulder under me. My head feels swollen from hanging upside down so long, but all I am thinking about is Butterfly. The other kids are fine. Bird even jumped up and down and laughed and yelled about how cool it was to see all those sparks fly when they cut through the metal.

They get a whole lot of young strapping men in to aid me out and have to cut my seatbelt. In my stress I deal with it the only way I know how, by making jokes and generally harassing the guys helping me. I tell the man with my head to quit trying to pull it off and he assures me that he is using very little pressure. My pain receptors say otherwise, but I am not in the mood to argue. I am strapped on one of those back boards and they place a neck collar on me so tight I almost can’t breath and my teeth are held clenched together. I remember one of them saying it was too tight. My inner smartass replied, “No, really?“

It takes six of the poor buggers to lift me onto a gurney. Like pallbearers, I think, but miraculously not. Not this time.

They tell me the little ones will ride in another ambulance to the hospital while I am put in with Butterfly. As soon as I can reach out to her I do, meeting her hand in midair. We only let go when the ambulance crew has to move between us or works on us. They want to stick one of those annoying I.V. stints in my arm, I tell them no. I am hard to find veins on and I can tell there is no deep injuries. My injury is in my neck. He thinks I am refusing for both of us, I clarify with a “Hell no, get one in my daughter, make sure she’s ok.” that I am refusing only for myself.

Butterfly’s repetitive questions are driving me nuts. I am so glad she is conscious and I think I am a complete asshole for getting annoyed. She asks me again how we crashed.

“Because your Mom is a dumbass, baby!” I reply. This makes the guys snicker a bit but I tell them it’s true.

“I was trying to pull over! I was mad!” I say as one EMT is trying to get an oxygen tube to stay under my nose. I am surprised by the tears that start to roll down my temples. “It’s my fault!” I say and lock eyes with the EMT helping me. He is not comfortable with this emotion. He fiddles with my nose tube, breaking eye contact with his hand as he looks away. The emotion is unsettling him. Easier to work the meat wagon when the meat isn’t sniveling.

It makes me think about how he must have to, in this line of work, disassociate himself from the patients, the victims he sees. Make them third person pseudo-fictitious. Just to keep his sanity.

I ask the EMT if this repetitive questioning is common in concussions and he tells me it is. They’ll have to do a C.T. scan at the hospital he says. Still, she is asking me again what happened. I know nothing I tell her will stay with her right now.

“Baby, you want me to sing you a song?” I ask, not sure how I will manage it since I can barely open my teeth. Just knowing that the song would soothe her. Music means a lot to our family.

“Ok.”

We often sing songs before bed at home. They are all Irish or Scottish ballads either having to do with battle or drinking. All I can thing of is a song my kids call Barley Green, one of their favorites and one Butterfly asks for a lot. The actual title is “Wind that Shakes the Barley”.

“You wanna hear Barley Green baby?”

“Yeah. Ok”

And so I sang to my daughter, as I prayed for a simple concussion, a song about a boy who breaks up with his love to go to battle right before they are ambushed and she dies in his arms.

Part of me tried to imagine what those EMTs thought about this crazy woman, singing this gawd-awful blood soaked ballad in an ambulance to an eleven year old girl, on the way to the hospital from a car wreck and then the Mom and me said, “Who the hell cares what they think?” because my daughter fell quiet and it is a song she knows. This is something we sing as a family and it is ours. Not theirs.

After that song ended, I dredged up from memory a song I wrote her when she was very small and her biological father had been threatening to take her from me and leave the state. It was a song I wrote when I went through the custody hearings. When I had to leave her for him to have his supervised visit. When we moved after he found out where we lived. It’s Butterfly’s Song.

Hush now my darling, go to sleep in the car

It’s miles ‘til we’re resting but it’s not very far

Mama’s right here now don’t you be scared,

It’s miles ‘til we’re resting so sleep ‘til we’re there

This long road’s a hard one

it’s twisted and worn

But together we’ll ride it on out of this storm

You and me baby, we’ll ride the night through

Go to sleep now my darling this song is for you

Hush now my darling, go to sleep in the car

It’s miles ‘til we’re resting but it’s not very far

Mama’s right here now don’t you be scared,

It’s miles ‘til we’re resting so sleep ‘til we’re there

The long road’s behind us, the sky’s lightening up

the storm clouds are parting the sun’s coming up

That long road’s behind us, there is new road ahead

soon now my darling, we’ll rest our heads

Hush now my darling, go to sleep in the car

It’s miles ‘til we’re resting but it’s not very far

Mama’s right here now don’t you be scared,

It’s miles ‘til we’re resting so sleep ‘til we’re there

 

I held her hand and I sang to her and I prayed. I worried. I felt tears leaking out of me. I couldn’t stop them. My inner smartass was mostly muzzled but for the sarcastic quip of “Great. It’s Ambulance; The Musical!” before I kicked her back in her closet for a time. The young man who was tending me, when I once again briefly locked eyes with him, eyes that were bloodshot and red-rimmed, didn’t look away as fast. But I didn’t try and hold his gaze, either.

They separated us at the hospital. I could hear my little ones on the other side of the curtain laughing with E.R. staff as they were checked over. Nunkee had thrown up when she came in so they did a C.T. scan on her than came back fine. Bird and Bunny didn’t even have a scratch. Butterfly and I were both scanned. Both came back negative. they did a frontal chest ex-ray of me.

The Highway Trooper came in to tell me that his math and my skid marks said I could have been going 75 and maybe more. I about had a heart attack. the last time I had looked at my speedometer it said 60. Which illustrates how sneaky and nasty anger can be when it gets us by the throat. He also told me it looked like I had let off the brake before I turned the wheel. To me it had felt like the rear-end had started to go. I thought my rear anti-lock brakes had failed. Was it possible I was still thinking of pulling over and turned the wheel after letting off? I was baffled and twice as freaked out. What the hell did I do?

I don’t know. I was cited for careless driving. Bunny had not been in a booster seat. He told me to take the $85 bucks he didn’t charge me for speeding and buy her a booster seat.

Some people had found my dog. He had run to the aviation parking lot and began barking his head off in the driveway. Frantic enough he attracted their attention. The woman told me they figured he was from the wreck and it took them forever to get him to come to them, he just kept barking. Finally, they got him in the car, took him home and called the Sherriff’s office. One of the fireman that was on our wreck and his wife brought Copper to the hospital.

G.M. had gotten a frantic call from his sister after her husband drove by the wreck and called her. G.M walked up to the hospital. We had a whole lot of people praying for us.

Butterfly had a concussion and ended up with a fabulous shiner with purple eyeliner and everything. Her head hurts every now and again.

My neck and ribs hurt a lot. Whiplash I guess. I went to my chiropractor and he got rid of my headache…until I moved my head weird last night. Yoga helps. I haven’t filled my pain prescription yet, I took the last five pain pills left over from my hysterectomy the first couple of days. I may end up getting it filled, I don’t know. Wish I had a Jacuzzi tub. I would live in it. Sleeping and staying asleep is hard. Moving, getting up…I am my slow motion self.

I wanted to write this out. I will write it out one time and it will be done. I need to write about the blessings of this too because I do still believe everything happens for a reason. Even this. Gratitude is on my plate daily. Even my damned dog made it out alive! That is Divinity at work.

The vehicle is a temporary setback. I lost my glasses in the wreck and that is also a temporary setback, although it is one that bothers me more than the care. I feel fuzzy around the edges and not quite awake when I have no glasses. A dear friend of mine let me borrow her because they are close enough I can see but off enough I feel like I have done weird drugs when I wear them.

But I have a tomorrow to look forward to. A tomorrow I can walk into. My children have their tomorrows to look forward to. To walk into.

We lived and we all walked out of that hospital.

Alive. Together.

Where is the Creator taking us next?

When Life Hands You Car Wrecks, Part One

On November 19th, 2009 my four children and I were on our way to the college to pick up my husband from school when we met true catastrophe for the first time.

It had been a bad day all around. We were supposed to have a Family Fun Night hosted by Bunny’s Head Start at the local bowling alley. Unfortunately, Bird had a very bad day at school, having a colossal meltdown over missing three minutes of recess, a meltdown that involved him almost hitting two teachers with his coat as he threw his tantrum, then narrowly missing hitting his own beloved teacher in the head with his locker door as she tried to talk him through it. Upon counseling with her and asking how I could follow through with consistent consequences at home, she told me she thought he ought to miss participating in the Family Fun night bowling activity. I agreed.

Conundrum. With no place to take him, and hell bent on making sure his bad choices at school didn’t make it so his punishment was leaked on my other children who wanted to participate I ended up having to take him to the bowling alley. Originally, we were going to sit in the car, but his constant seven year old pleas of “I just want to watch, please? I won’t play, I just want to watch, I promise I won’t throw a fit…” wore at me. I finally told him I would let him go in, watching only, no playing, no fits, etc.

I am a fucking idiot at times.

His mood sometimes sets my two year old daughters mood as well. I should say, the dynamic of both our moods does. I was trying to keep my cool when in all reality I wanted to choke his little neck shut. I was swinging between patience and fury, dangling on a hinge of sanity.

Then we stepped into the bowling alley. Lights, movement, overwhelming noise and yelling little children everywhere. As soon as we got to the floor and I spotted Bunny’s teacher’s aide I told her of the situation as fast as I could because I now had a two year old clinging to my thigh in terror and a seven year old bawling about how “It’s not FAIR the GIRLS get to bowl and I DON’T!”.

Bunny’s teacher’s aide is a saint and I will one day build her a shrine because she took not only Bunny, but Nunkee who was now totally unafraid and marauding through the place. Butterfly just went on her merry way and blended like she does. On of my old Head Start students, from back in my own teacher’s aide days was there as well and wanted to socialize with me. I love the boy to death, but while juggling Bird’s revolving meltdowns I was not at my social best.

Bird and I ended up outside at one point. Him screaming that I hated him, me telling him I hated how he acted but always loved him, even when he was behaving like an asshole (yes. I said that. To my seven year old son. Mother of the year anyone?). Him, sitting on the sidewalk in front of the cars, sobbing, me, wandering further out into the parking lot to quietly bawl while leaning on the Head Start bus.

Bird, saying in his loudest, most dramatic sobbing Tom-Hanks-as-Woody voice, “ Well I guess I’ll just sit outside here and play with this STUPID TOY I have in my pocket! *sob*” At which point he stands up, turns around and begins pounding his fists on the metal siding of the bowling alley, howling to the heavens ” This is gonna be SOOOOO Fun! *sob, bawl, cry*” at which point, me, ever the sensitive and compassionate Mom, start laughing like a jackal on crack. This of course prompts a scream of rage from my son as he begins trying to pelt down the sidewalk. Which prompts me then to use the Voice of God on him and tell him to stop. He does, and stands there sobbing at being laughed at.

“It’s NOT FUNNY!” he yells at me as I come up to him.

“I know you don’t feel happy right now, Bird, but it did sound funny, with you bangin’ on the wall like that.”

Bird leans into me and wails for a second or two.

“I love you Birdie. You know I do.”

“I know. I love you too.”

We stand there for a moment, gathering ourselves. Leaning on each other in mutual exhausted frustration. We wander around to the back of the building because he has to go pee and wild bikers could not drag me back through that chaotic hell to a bathroom with my boy at this time. Besides, we’re in small town Montana, no street lights, and I tell him his Grandpa, my father probably peed behind that bowling alley a time or two back in his beer drinking bowling days.

“Papa used to bowl here?”

“Yeah. Grammy too. they were on a bowling league for awhile together even. When I was little it was mostly my dad that went. He bowled on these same lanes.”

Bird doesn’t seem more than mildly interested and in fact finds the side double doors much more exciting in all their endless possibility.

“Maybe they load the bowling balls in here! When I grow up I am gonna have a bowling alley and we’ll bring a big truck in to load the balls through that door…” and my little Bird is his magpie self. I can tell he is ready to go back in…it is getting chilly, it’s November after all, though warmer than normal.

Back in to chaos. Bird helps with getting his sister’s their balls on the ball return platform and Nunkee almost gets her fingers smashed repeatedly messing with the balls though I take her from the platform time and again… and pull her back from running down the bowling lane, and listen to her go into toddler deaf mode, yelling “No!” to me with everything I say and trying to run off. The tension that had been loosely capped begins to overflow again and Nunkee goes from bad to temper tantrum shrieking worse and I find myself wishing that I drank. Heavily.

Bunny’s teacher, also a very dear friend of mine, promises me we are soon done. Thank God! I think. Then we can go get G.M and get home! I am tired, the dogs need fed, so do the cats. Wonder if the ferret is out of water. Hope Butterfly’s rat didn’t get out. Copper’s been in the car a long time. He peed though, before we left Mom’s. Need to get these guys food before we go into Kalispell, thought they were gonna have food here, guess not. Damn this place is loud! It’s giving me a headache, where the hell did that baby get to now? Wish I could help Butterfly on her throw, don’t know why Bunny doesn’t use the little kid’s cheater ramp….

Soon it was done and then we were boot and coat wrangling and trying to convince Nunkee it was time to go while my former Head Start boy reminds me I have yet to come by to see his new goats. I put a reminder in my phone for that Friday to come see them and get my kids out to the parking lot. The whole damned lot of them latch on to the one meager parking lot light pole and start climbing and hanging on it. It’s cute for about 5 seconds and then I am done and want them all to GET IN THE CAR NOW!

At which point, Nunkee, oh-so-very-two, begins to arch her back and scream like I am gutting her as I try to get her into her car seat. Now I have the equivalent of an octopus on PCP that I am trying to stuff into a five point harness child seat. After I get her arms in the straps I actually have to push her into a sitting position to get the crotch straps. I snug the chest piece as far up her chest as I can because she is in a mood to try and slip her child restraints as she has done on me in the past. She is still fighting and struggling with me, shrieking like a cat on fire in my ear. I am now speaking in angry hiss because my teeth are clenched so tight. I am furious. I hate this fucking night! I think. Family Fun night my ass! With these screaming little bastards it would have been more fun to stay home and gouge out my own goddamned eyes with a fucking spoon!

I want to hit her so bad. Then I hate myself for feeling that way. Spend a moment cursing my family for raising me in violence and anger. get in the car and try to catch a breath.

Down the road at the grocery store I tell them I will go in and get them some food, I know part of their problem is that it is 7:30 and they have yet to have dinner. We still have to drive 15 miles to the college to get Daddy before turning around and driving the 32 miles home. I tell Butterfly to stay in the car and the younger ones all start bawling when I tell them there is no way in hell they will be going into the store after the way things went down at the bowling alley. I know this isn’t fair to Bunny and Butterfly who weren’t absolute little shits, but I can’t take two in and leave the others. A large population of people would even be horrified that I left my kids alone in the car in the first place to go into the grocery store. In Denver Colorado I wouldn’t. But I live in Montana. In a small community. The odds of someone coming and kidnapping my four children is about as likely as a meteor falling on my house.

Besides, I pity the poor bastard who would even try such a suicidal stunt. My children would probably eat him.

Back in the car I hand Butterfly a bag. I know I was really stressing because I couldn’t think of what to feed them. All I could hear in my head were their little piping voices telling me “Ew! I don’t like that!” and “That’s gross!” and I wasn’t about to pay $10.99 for a bag of jerky. Butterfly looked in the bag at the crackers, oranges and yogurt. Then she pulled out the jar of pickles and gave me a confused look.

“What? You tell me you hate everything else lately. I know you like pickles.”

“Okay…” she said dubiously as put the jar back and got out the crackers.

I passed out yogurt and told them to drink it like cups. I needed to get to Kalispell. The clock read 7:37 and his class got out at 8. I felt we were making pretty good time. I had to yell at the dog once to “Get in back!” after he saw Nunkee, ever the source of Manna from Heaven had something tasty. She was screaming at him, ” NO COPPA MINE!”

We were on the way, for the first two miles they were quiet. I felt like I had that Bill the Cat look on my face. I was so frazzled. I hate crowds and noise unless they involve music. But the crashing bowling alley thunder…

I got on LaSalle and glanced at my speedometer. Fifty-five. I brought it up to sixty before I heard them. I don’t know if it was Bunny or Nunkee who started the screaming fight . I yelled at them to stop. I couldn’t turn around and mediate and neither one of them were screaming any words I could make out. I was so angry with them! Why couldn’t they just eat their fucking food and shut the fuck up? Why was every car ride lately like this? Everyone finding something to bitch or scream about? I felt like I was losing my mind. The shrieking escalated to earsplitting decibels.

“That’s IT!” I snarled.

I meant to do what I have done on occasion when their backseat bickering has pushed me to the point of wanting to beat them until their butts fall off. I was going to pull over to the side of the road. This would either make them all immediately be quiet and stop fighting or it would give me a chance to get the hell out of the car before I got to the point of screaming and not being able to stop.

I meant to pull over. I did not realize just how angry I was. Or how fast I was going.

I heard the brakes lock and the tires began to squeal.

I remember thinking, “Fuck! I could lose control of the car!”

I remember feeling like the rear end was swinging around.

I remember feeling the car swing around and seeing the airport fence go by in front of me.

I remember feeling…something, then it was all noise and I didn’t see anything. I felt my body slam hard into the doorframe. I felt broken glass against me cheek and worse, grass.

Jesus! We’re rolling! My kids! GOD HOLD THEM!

 

Get your head away from that window!

 

Tucking my shoulder to lean toward Butterfly and reaching out to grab her.

My babies, really screaming now.

My babies!

The shock of still, looking at the glassless sunroof and the grass. Try to move, neck hurts. Babies screaming, screaming…hurts, oh God, are they hurt?!

 

“Guys! It’s ok. is anyone hurt? ” screams and crying answer me. I look at Butterfly. I am hanging from my seatbelt, the only thing holding me up. I see no blood on her but for a few cuts on her scalp, she is crying, scared. Lying trapped between the seat and crumpled roof, head on the visor. She’s lying on her right side, facing me.

“Mom, what happened? Mom, my head hurts!”

My babies are screaming and I can see cars stopping through the broken sunroof. I can’t move to turn around to see or help them.

The Voice is there.

They will all live. You all will live. The small ones are fine.

 

“Mom, my head hurts. What happened?”

My Butterfly! My babies. My anger.

My fault!

 

Walking with Divine Guidance

There is a learning process you go through in order to find that connection with the Divine, and it is a lifelong learning process. It will only stall if you stop trying.

One of my prayers had been, ‘Please make the lessons obvious because subtlety is sometimes lost on me and I need obvious lessons!’ Ever hear the old adage ‘Be careful what you ask for…’. Yeah. I got lessons but I didn’t see them as such until much later. I let myself get discouraged and beaten down. At least twice a year I could, without fail, expect all shit to hit the fan, whether it was a job loss or vehicle breakdown. I expected it to happen. I didn’t know then, that my own mindset was part of why it happened. Unfailingly, once in spring and once in the autumn, either one major crisis or a plethora of them would come crashing into my world totally throwing every sense of security out the window.

It’s taken me until now to realize that the voice of the Creator speaks in the events of our lives as well as the quiet of our hearts.

I have been going through a lot of life changes recently, for the better. There are things I am feeling very positive and excited about. There are also daunting tasks (winter is coming, how’s the wood supply?), frustrations (will my house ever get cleaned and will my children ever quit baiting one another?) and setbacks (living on a mountain with 50 plus junk cars, shouldn’t the odds of us having one that DIDN’T need work be better?).

I have plugged into a wonderful group of people near me that I am learning a lot from. I still feel like I need direction and part of me still feels lost, while another part feels like I am on the right path. I know confronting those fears is tantamount to success. To truly believing I am able to pull my family up out of poverty, that nothing will stop me.

It came home to me about three weeks ago when I heard a very wise and honest young man named William Gamble speak. He said, in his presentation, “When the student is ready, the teachers will appear.”

I feel I am a ready and willing student. But there is no hall pass labeled Easy in this school of life. We overcome hardship and are stronger for it. That way, we can overcome the next and become stronger still. Until our spirits burn so brightly we truly shine.

The path I have been on from last year to this, from then to now has been a journey. Self discovery. Forgiveness. Facing your fears. Letting go of things I can’t control. Knowing and really bringing home the lesson that the only person I can truly have a say in being is me. Not my husband. He makes his choices. Not my children. It is my job to teach them right and live by example. That seems to be the bottom line.

Living by example. This means living on faith. Belief. This does not mean discouragement won’t come. As I am writing this I am ending a week that has been very discouraging. I have a lot of questions even yet about the paths I have chosen to take. Keeping the belief in my heart and keeping the faith that life is looking up can be a hard image to hold on to. But it’s not all about me anymore. Not with the passel of kids I have depending on me.

When the student is ready, the teachers will appear.We cannot say who, or what, those teachers will be. When we are receptive to Divine guidance, we must learn to hold faith, believe and receive. When we are ready to receive, the changes come fast. It blows me away. Such are the nature of miracles.

 

There is an amazing video out there that was recommended to me. It was produced in 2006 and it is called The Secret. You can also access information on it at www.thesecret.tv. It will make all the difference.

We have one life to live. We will make mistakes on our journey. We always have choices. If we choose to stay passive and do nothing, that is still a choice and our life will reflect it. However, should we choose to light a fire under our…hearts…we have the power to make changes in our lives that are amazing. We will then be the living example we should be, and the light of the Divine will shine from us on our walk. What a wonderful way to live!

 

Lesson Learned

I asked myself repeatedly why I had volunteered to do a job I knew nearly nothing about.  I kept asking that question.  I prayed about that question.  And through the long, arduous, pain in the ass process answers came to me in bits and pieces.

There is no doubt in my mind that the woman renting from Norby is in a domestic situation.  She spoke grateful words, but underneath there was this intense level of hostility that I did not like.  Not because it may not have been justified, but because it triggered in me something I didn’t like.  My own past came to the forefront and I really, really, REALLY wanted to haul off and smack this woman on more than one occasion.  Dealing with her in her hostility triggered that smash-it-down abuser quality I learned from my father, that aspect of myself I despise and struggle with.  My struggles with it now usually happen when I am very tired or extremely stressed.  Yet it is still there.  Strike out in anger.  Smack her upside her rude, ungrateful head.  I was ashamed of myself for having those thoughts.

I had tried to make friendly overtures to her.  The place was so Spartan, unwelcoming.  Empty beer boxes stacked by the front door.  When she once walked into the kitchen and I saw her face in the light I saw evidence in her face of long term alcohol use or abuse.  Her skin was pasty and mottled; her face bearing that swelling from kidneys that had processed so many toxins flushing the system of water was a chore.

I had taken time away from my family and schoolwork to fix something for this person.  She hadn’t even attempted to fix it on her own, which baffled me.  I’m a Montana girl, born and bred and I don’t know how they do things in Michigan, but here, if you have a problem you either fix it yourself or ask one of your friends or neighbors who might be able to help.  I was confused, and so was Norby, as to why she didn’t contact him about fixing it.  There was supposed to be a roommate that was fixing it, and he was doing nothing about it.

I wanted Norby to have peace of mind.  With that tumor taking up room and pressing on his memory circuits, he needs all the peace of mind he can get.  He has no family, and so far as I can tell, no one looks in on him.  This really bothers me because he is a really cool man.  He was crazy to trust me with his plumbing, but he did it anyway.  Now, that man either has a lot of faith or a lot of hope and I like being around people like that.  They are good teachers.

So, GM and I went home Tuesday night.  Wednesday came when we were supposed to return, at nine o’clock that night, but we had another family crisis when S had to put GM’s father B in the hospital.  He has pneumonia.  And a mass on his lung.  Needs and MRI.  Knows his time is coming.  It has been almost a year since B’s brother K died.  Will be a year the 29^th of this month.  B told me today that he wants to cremated and scattered on our land.  He told me he wouldn’t hurt the kids or nothing, just watch them play.

 

So I had called Kelly and told her we wouldn’t be there.  Told her I would come in the evening after class Thursday.  Norby met me there and I had the parts and thank God for Teflon tape.  Finally, I got the fittings on.  Just about that time, the roommate made and appearance with his girlfriend Sparky.  I don’t know if that was her real name and I don’t care.  Judging from her mouth and attitude, she had earned it.

The roommate’s name was Ken and he was shitface drunk.  Wow.  Put me on my Big Surprised face.  He proceeded to inquire how it was going and expound at length as to why he had decided he wasn’t going to fix anything under there because it would have been such a pain in the ass, blah, blah, fuck you, blah blah.

I needed another wrench and a breather and asked Norby to take me to his shop a block away to get it.  He had commented on my lack of communication once Ken and Sparky arrived. I told Norby that I had a low tolerance for drunken assholes so I was going to keep my mouth shut if I could.  He laughed and told me that was sometimes the best recourse.

We got back and I got everything attached, turned the water supply on under the house, turned it off again very quickly to fiddle some more.  I was running into some problems.  Like the fact the house and plumbing were old enough the ONLY water shut off valve was under the house, coming up out of city water.  And it leaked when you shut it off because it had been run in the early part of the township construction.  Not even close to being up to code.  The plastic drain fitting I had purchased was bumping into the metal pipe and I had cross threaded it.  So, when I loosened it to fix it, the pliable plastic threads had stripped.  I almost started bawling.  The faucet we had purchased fit in the sink, but the old pipes were too tall so it sits up above the sink leaving a ridiculous looking gap.  I really didn’t care as long as it worked.  Then the drunken expert came in and started messing with it, trying to push the faucet down.  I tried to explain but it didn’t penetrate the fog.  So I had to get a lot more firm.  He kind of got the hint, coupled with Sparky screaming at him to “Leave her the fuck alone, she knows what she’s doing!” (Ha! I though. Shows what you know!).

Finally all was hooked up.  There were no noticeable leaks.  I turned the kitchen faucet on.

Nothing. NOTHING. No water.  Just a tiny drip.

Every other faucet in the house worked, just not that one.  I was floored.  There were no other valves so it wasn’t a water shut off.  We all agreed there was a blockage somewhere.  Where?  I was dumbfounded.  So was Norby.  Then the drunken guy went it, unscrewed the faucet end and turned the water faucet on.  It worked! There was some sand or tiny rocks that had blocked the faucet.  The guy started going on and on about how there was a ‘Piece of shit” stuck in there and he pulled it out and yes sir now it worked and if he hadn’t pulled that piece of shit out there would have never been water.  I told him he did a good job trying that since no one else had thought about it.  I noticed it was still leaking through the drain pipes and he went on and on about the piece of shit in the faucet.  As I was under the sink cleaning up he started talking about how he fixed the sink.  I just shook my head.  The one drain pipe was still not stable.  The threads had been stripped too far.  But I’ll be damned it I was going to bend over backwards on this project anymore.  I was done.  I Tef taped the hell out of it and called it good.  There was still a small drip but I told her to just keep the ice-cream bucket under there and keep an eye on it.  I didn’t volunteer to come back and fix it if it all blew apart.  In fact, I told her that this was the only time I would work on it.  A man I like and respect very much needed a hand with his income property.  These tenants may very well screw him over.  Kelly’s stuff isn’t in storage; she sold it all to move over here.  Her ‘boyfriend’ works in asbestos cleanup, which would be a pretty damned high paying job around here.  She lives in a shithole shack and keeps all her receipts.  But she is not a woman who is looking for a way out.  If she was, I would have been all over it.  But she is not.

I told Kelly to keep the cupboard door open so her nearby heater could help dry it out under there.  They were all happy it was working.

“Bathroom faucet’s broke too!” spouted Ken, “You coming back to fix that too?”

“Absolutely not!” I replied.

Ken started ogling the patchwork pipes and saying that he could ‘straighten out and brace up’ a section of pipe down there, it needed to be done, etc.  I told him politely that it would hold.  Alcohol seems to fog hearing as well.  So I interrupted him to speak in a louder, more firm voice in a language he could comprehend.

“Dude, if you lay a hand on those pipes I will kick you in the balls so hard your fucking head will fly off!  Everything under there is being held together by Tef tape and a prayer and if you touch them I will probably have to kill you.”

Norby’s cute when he chuckles.

I gathered his tools I had borrowed and walked him home. 

“I’m curious,” he said in his velvet smooth, gentle and well articulated voice, “What the motivation in all this was.  You are doing this for nothing.  You’ve paid for the parts.  What is this?”

Damned good question, I thought.  I mulled it over for a minute.

“About thirteen years ago I prayed really hard for teachers.  I had a lot of questions in my life.” I told him

“I got ‘em too.  Some of them are pretty hard teachers.  Things seem to go wrong and get all screwed up.  But the lesson is in learning to deal with the hardships and see what you learned from them.  To be a stronger and better person.  And to try and give some of that to other people, if that makes sense.”

“Perfect sense.” Norby told me.

The lesson here is in learning priorities.  Learning when to take on other peoples burdens and when to put them down.  Lessons of friendship.  Lessons of teamwork. Learning from those who you may not think could teach you.  Praying for healing to come to the lives of those you want to smack upside the head.  Trying to find that spark in a person that does a good job seeing something you couldn’t and giving that spark a boost of good mojo by blowing some gratitude its way.

Most of all maybe, of letting someone who may not have anyone know that he isn’t alone in the world.

GM and I will check on Norby.  There are more things going on with him that don’t involve plumbing and won’t suck the life out of me that we could help him on.  I would love to see my husband work with him more.  My husband needs role models like this gentle man.

As I had wiped up the last of that water underneath that disaster of a sink I said a prayer of thanks.

Lesson learned.

Woes of a Misguided Samaritan

I have really out done myself lately.  I told my husband I must be suffering from some sort of displaced hero syndrome or something equally bazaar.

Rewind to last Friday evening.  GM had the kids at home so I could finishing up laundry in town.  This is also my time to get away and do something solitary, or not, as it strikes me.  I decided, after briefly visiting a friend, to go on a walk around the town.

We have had a very long Indian summer, up until today when we have had rain and snow showers.  Nothing to stick yet, just Mother Nature’s early warning system of the season to come.

As I wandered town I was struck by the memories of this once small area grown larger.  I kept running into bits and pieces of myself on different streets.  Here, behind Duval’s, an empty lot where a very nice old Italian man had once lived.  I was very, very small.  I was with Mother. I have no idea who he was or what we were visiting him for.  He was very old and I loved the lyric music of his Old World accent.  I think he died long ago back then.  I remember he was lonely.  He had no family here.  Perhaps he was going back somewhere.  It was too long ago.

Just around the corner from Duval’s was our town’s original main street.  What had once been the post office, Krueger Drug, the Christian Bookstore and a lawyer’s office was now a few office buildings interspersed with vacancies.  My childhood best friend, Maria, and I used to pick my Mother’s flowers and sell them as bouquets by the fistful for a few coins to go buy candy.  We even got away with it a couple times before Mom yelled at us for picking her flowers, not realizing we were actually capitalizing on our destruction.

I wandered past the fire hall, down the street near the place GM lived during our separation, in the little shack that had memories for me dating back to high school.

I noticed a garden on the street and next to these beautiful sunflowers was this gorgeous plant about five feet tall and dripping with foot long magenta clusters of flowers.  I thought I knew what it was, and being the plant freak I am, I had to go over and look.  There were some young men sitting on the steps of the house and I asked if it was their garden then asked for permission to come over an openly gawk.  A handsome young man who introduced himself as Sky confirmed my suspicions.  It was the grain amaranth, also known, Sky informed me, as Love Lies Bleeding.  I didn’t know it would grow here in Montana, much less be so beautiful.  I have an open invitation to come back when the grain is ripe if it doesn’t freeze first.

I soon noticed a person walking over.  I have a big mouth and a loud laugh and the laughter must have drawn him.   It was Norby, GM’s old landlord.  I bid Sky good evening and proceeded to speak to Norby.  Turns out the rumor GM and I had heard about his having brain cancer is true.  Norby has a tumor in his brain.  He hasn’t been to see a doctor in a long time.  He probably couldn’t remember if her had.  It was soon evident when he told me he couldn’t remember me or GM, who had rented from him for over two years.

Norby is the owner of a couple rentals.  To say they are falling down pieces of crap would be not only accurate, but generous.  He has always rented out his places as ‘fixer-uppers’, encouraging tenants to do their own repairs in exchange for rock bottom rent prices.  Needless to say this has not always worked to his advantage, since the tenants who can usually afford rock bottom rent aren’t usually the kind of tenants that are highly skilled in the areas of things like, say, plumbing issues.  It doesn’t serve the tenants really, either, to rent these places.  They should all be bulldozed really, but we have a mentality here in Montana sometimes of mending up those broken down things.  And we’re just plain cracked at times as well.

Norby is an older guy, served his time over in Vietnam.  Apparently I have some sort of magnet.  There is also a connection between Vietnam vets and hoarding, at least in the two instances I am familiar with.  Only Norby doesn’t hoard dogs, just ‘useful’ stuff.  Beautiful stuff to mess around with, he called it.

So here is me, hearing his story, his frustration, especially his frustration with his current and only tenant in the largest of these three rentals.  The couple had some guy rooming with them.  Said guy kept telling Norby he’d fix the leak under the sink but instead was off fixing someone else’s house.  meanwhile water was leaking and no doubt doing more damage to the already damaged space under the sink.  The man has major problems.  This is near to his only income other than whatever he may get for disability or VA stuff.  It just didn’t seem right to not help.

I thought, ‘Leak under the sink?  How hard is that? I’ve done that for Mom before!  Some new pipe and tef tape, no prob!”

Isn’t the road to hell supposed to be paved with good intentions or something?

Norby was on his was over to talk to this woman about the leaks.  I volunteered to put on my Good Samaritan cape and tag along.

Her name is Kelly.  When we got there and Norby asked to speak to her, she wouldn’t let us in the house because, she told us, her boyfriend was sleeping.  Odd, I thought.  It was chilly and drizzling out.

When I began to ask when I could come over to check out the pipes, she told me Tuesdays were her day off which is my field work day at the college.  I inquired about her weekend schedule.

“Oh, no.” she said in her east coast just-moved-from-Michigan drawl. “My boyfriend’s home on the weekends and all my time is taken up by him.  You can’t come here on the weekend.”

Huh.  Red flag #1.

I was completely sympathetic.  So I asked her, if I was really quiet if I could come in and take a quick glance under the kitchen sink.  She agreed, somewhat reluctantly.  There was a comment made in passing about the leaky faucet and me, being the kind of person who will actually sometimes only be able to focus on one thing at a time, sort of let that wash over me.  Besides, I was on a stealth mission and silence plus rapid assessment were my goals.

Walking in to that house though, was more than a bit like walking into a minefield.  The place was very neat.  It was the air that held the charges.  Deep, tightly held, with an almost palpable viscosity to it.  I kept my voice low and quiet, but on one point, in peering under the sink at plumbing from when my parents were married in the 50s, I chuckled a little too loud, my voice grew above a whisper and Kelly shushed me, her “SH!” falling like a dagger between my shoulders.

So that’s the way it is here, is it? I thought.

I discussed a plan of action with Norby and the tension at my back grew until she curtly asked us, “Are you done here?” and we got up to go outside.  We hadn’t even been in three whole minutes.

I told them I would come back Tuesday.  Kelly said that was her day off and her boyfriend of twenty years was only home on weekends.  I spoke a bit more with her.  Just moved over from Michigan.  No friends or family here.  Doesn’t know anyone.  Works within walking distance.

I was aware of a whole other level of communication going on.  I don’t know if Kelly was aware of it, I know Norby wasn’t.  This is what I got that wasn’t being said;

This is my place.  You have to be careful here.  No one comes around when my boyfriend is here.  It’s not safe then.  You come when I tell you.  When it’s safe.  When it’s ok.  Only if you come to fix stuff.

At least that’s what I got out of it.

Tuesday rolled around and all hell broke loose for us.  My second Monday, having missed my Resources Calculations class on Monday.  Our explorer’s tire had gone flat Monday night so we decided to drive the Bronco in Tuesday.  Until its transmission started to majorly screw up.  I ended up thumbing a ride with a nice lady who lives up our way.  She gave me an my older school kids a ride into town and cell phone service, then dropped me off at my mom’s while she took my daughter to the junior high.  I owe her one, I tell you, and I love living here for the kindness of strangers.

GM called to tell me he had the Bronco running enough to limp it to town.  So, early in the afternoon I went over to Kelly’s after calling.  She and Norby were waiting.  It was then they showed me the faucet and how I missed it, well, I missed it.  It wasn’t just leaky, it was broken.  The pipes underneath were out of alignment and a mix of plastic, copper brass, and maybe even lead.  When I looked at the faucet the corrosion on the fixtures was something a stalagmite cave would envy.  I called GM.

This is where I am kicking myself for not seeing if I could have maybe just replaced the handles and washers in the faucet.  I probably couldn’t have but after last night I would have tried it had I known.

I arrived at Kelly’s at 3:30 yesterday afternoon.  By 11:30 yesterday evening, GM and I were taking a couple huge water containers over to Mom’s to fill up until we could get the parts we need to maybe, hopefully, with direct Divine intervention and a plain old miracle, fix that piece of shit sink enough it doesn’t spray water every time the main is turned on.  The whole house out to the city water needs to be renovated.

Here’s a lesson from this: You volunteer to help someone do something then there will be a liability and responsibility to make it right if there is a screw up.

Here’s another lesson: When you volunteer to help someone, make sure it is not a soul sucking venture, especially on the day your cars crap out and it being the eve of a big test you haven’t studied for.

Kelly wasn’t too happy with us.  For one, we were there way longer than it felt safe for us to be there, even with her boyfriend out of town.  She has two beautiful husky mix dogs.  The one, Chevelle, with her floppy bobbed over ears and blue eyes was most intrigued by the hole in the floor leading under the house.  Cloe, the shy sheltie/husky cross of one blue eye and one brown warmed up after the first few hours enough to come ask for pets.  When GM came in the house, Chevelle tucked her tail and barked.  For a while.  She hadn’t done that to me or Norby for that matter.  Just the younger man in the baseball cap.  Huh.  Dog’s afraid of men.

What red flag am I on here?

House neat but Spartan.  A couple candles.  Knick Knacks to a bare minimum.  Could be everything’s in storage….could be my imagination?

My gut doesn’t think so.

Finally, after GM working for HOURS on that faucet, we were leaving.  I knew she wasn’t happy, but she thanked me.  Thanked me for all my hard work.  Just me.  My husband had worked more hours on it than I had.  Why wasn’t she allowed to see him?

Really, I am afraid to know the answer to that.  I am afraid I already do.

WalkingThrough the Fog By a Thread

It sits above my brows like a low level drift, thick, impenetrable, sometimes with a low level buzz that keeps me on the edge of irritation at all times and is most likely caused but an overabundance of caffeine sizzling through my bloodstream.  This is the fog in my head. I have been asking myself lately, “What the fuck were you thinking, going back to school in the fall semester instead of waiting for spring?”

I do this to myself periodically. I have some diabolical insane part of me that decides that life isn’t stressful enough trying to live the life of a modern pioneer, with children,  but I must further complicate it by going beyond the bounds of even my own oft times questioned sanity.

Sometimes I think I have two crazy people sharing my brain that are in a constant competition of one-upsmanship.

Then I reflect in a more relaxing moment that I went back to school after a lot of thought and prayer and after truly feeling as if that were the direction I were being guided in.  The challenge is to try and keep on top of it all.

Keeping on top of it is something I aspire to like a crack addict hoping for the next fix.  Problem is I have no supplier and me and organization is not something that goes together.  ‘Keeping on top of it’ implies that I should have (sh)it all together in a tidy pile to be able to surmount it.  Reality shows in fact, that it is in a constant state of cave-in and I am more like an ant scrambling madly up the perpetually sliding sand hill.

My husband has accused me of being a hummingbird, flitting from one thing to another and never finishing.  I do finish things….just not all together or all in the same day.  He doesn’t realize that I have many personality aspects vying for control in my head.  They don’t always agree on what should come first.  So I end up sabotaging myself in quite a few areas and productive turnout is pathetic.

Take my kitchen for example.  My hearth.  The center of health, communion and sustenance for my family.  The place that, traditionally, as a mother, should be warm and peaceful, a place of nourishment for mind, body and spirit.

What I have for a kitchen is a 15 foot camp trailer.  It has two bunks that are used as storage spots.   The regular table broke and I tried having a small coffee table in there.  It serves as a place to pile stuff.  Some useful, some not so.  The same can be said for the seats.  In fact, the seat by the door is piled with boxes from our storage unit and cases of canned goods from the case lot sale at B & B last month.  I have a small propane cookstove barely large enough for a cake pan and not tall enough to brave baking an actual loaf of bread.  I only have an icebox style fridge, so in the summer months there are things I just don’t buy.  Like mayonnaise, butter or milk.  They spoil too quickly.  We get either enriched rice or almond milk, which keeps longer, or powdered milk, which tastes disgusting but works for cooking.  We can’t keep ice long enough in the coolers.  If we buy fresh produce it needs to be eaten within one or two days max to prevent spoilage.  This does not always happen so I always have a gallon of white vinegar on hand to kill off the science experiment that grows inside dark moist coolers when vegetables or dairy products cross over to the other side.

It’s not like I don’t know what I should be doing.  I know there are things I could or should do.  Sometimes I even make lists.  Where I consistently fail is in the practical application.  Often I feel as if I am facing this maelstrom of ‘stuff that needs to be done’ and it hits me in the face as soon as I open my eyes.  I don’t know where to begin.  Or, if I begin, I am easily drawn into the next ‘important thing to do’.

Looking at those pictures of F’s filthy kitchen made me realize the only difference between our housekeeping styles at first glance is that I put all my food cans in a huge laundry hamper outside to take to recycling, and I have mouse poison under the trailer bed to discourage any would be tenant vermin.  Ok, probably there is a lot less animal filth too, though the level of food spillage my children and I seem to generate is horrifying.  Bunny, my now five year old daughter also has a penchant for conducting cupboard recon for the sole purpose of commandeering cereal.  There is now an amazing amount of Count Chocula in the potato and onion bucket from our meager garden harvest.

I have NO PLACE to store anything.  So things get piled on the bunks, on the table, on the counters.  Then it avalanches and I cuss and shuffle it around and try to form new stacks.  I swear I am cleaning the place up, but then I have kids who are hungry RIGHT NOW and will DIE OF STARVATION if they are not fed within ten minutes.  But now I need a cooking pot because we got home too late the previous night to heat the water and do the previous nights dishes and they are all sitting, dirty, in the huge purple wash bin outside.  An I can’t find my frying pan because there is still a bag of canned goods sitting on it from the groceries we bought two or three days ago that I have been meaning to get into the cupboard if only I could reach it because there are two coolers, a shallow pan of hand washing water and half a case of Coca-Cola sitting between me and the teeny tiny little cupboards I have to cram everything to feed six people in for two weeks.

I kick the case of Coca-Cola and curse the company for ever taking the coca out of it, because, having gotten to actually try chewing some coca a former employer brought back from her trip to Peru, I could sure use that kind of caffeine-without-the-jitters-or-irritability energy boost to get this shithole cleaned and I don’t think I am getting to South America anytime soon to lay in my own supply.

This is usually when I leave the trailer, step outside, right into the face of the entire full length trailer house GM used to live in that has completely collapsed, exposing its guts of moldering books, bed frames, clothes, car parts, tufts of hairy insulation, mouse shit, furniture and some appliances mixed with God only knows what else in a musty smelling carnage.  My only bright spot in that view is that there is a boreal toad that lives somewhere in it, possibly under that bed frame pedestal and he croaks briefly throughout the day.  Trailer trash habitat.  Adaptive species amaze me.

Then I go hide in my outhouse.

This is pathetically, one of the only places where I can invoke the “LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE” rights to privacy laws so scarce in a parent’s life.

Back when I lived in a house in civilization with actual running water I would lock myself in for either a library period or a hot bath.  I don’t have the bath luxury now, and the length of library period depends on the weather temperature and whether or not my enzymes are doing their job at odor control.  But for a time, it is a place where I can hide and they can’t come in.  Oh, I do take off up the mountain sometimes, and Boo, my foster dog turned family member will sniff me out every time.  But I can’t just leave the kids like they used to do in the olden days to go out and get wood or work the distant fields.  Not only is this frowned on now days, but modern kids aren’t equipped to deal with things on their own.  In fact, you can bet that as soon as I am out of the house Bunny gets it into her head that all former house rules about safety, respect of others property, and general rules of proper conduct have left on my heels and there will soon emanate from our humble domain such a shrieking, caterwauling, thumping, or worse, ominous and pregnant silence you have ever encountered.  Most times I will return to find my baby, Nunkee, with new war paint either in the medium of marker or biggest sister’s pillaged makeup, objects once high upon the shelves stomped into the floor, every toy box, jewelry box, container, or suitcase upended and scattered, and a five year old Bunny proclaiming in prim report, “Nunkee did it, I saw her!”

Which is usually where my voice maxes out at the sound barrier, children attempt to flee in terror or pick up as quickly as humanly possible, and I stomp back up to rail in vain at the general disarray of my life and kitchen space.

Then I kick that Coca-cola box again.

I know one thing that will help me maintain my sanity.  I can keep writing.  I will be making time every week, possibly more than once (baby steps!) to come into the college library and maintain my thread of communication with myself through this outlet.  That way GM won’t be trying to sneak peeks over my shoulder to read what horrible family secrets I may be spilling and I won’t have to minimize the damned screen every two minutes, breaking my thread of concentration.  That thread is the only way I have of finding my way through the fog.

I know there are few certainties I can count on in this life.  I am certain hanging on for dear life to this thread is my necessity.  My emotional sustenance and survival.  My way of seeing it through and maybe, just maybe having it make sense in the end.  It is my one, unbreakable link to sanity in the chaos.

Or so the voices tell me.

Signs of Healing

Editor’s note:  I have been trying for THREE DAYS to get these pictures on here.  True to my style of organization, they are on here bass-ackwards, so you get to see the pictures ‘after’ and ‘before’ instead of the other way around.  To those of you who actually keep a clean house, it may not seem like the miracle it is.  When you see the ‘before’ pictures, you may have a better understanding.

 

I wanted to see if I could get the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of F’s cabin on here.  I am sort of a techno-idiot for simple things like uploading pictures.  But I feel like it is an important part of the story for people to be able to see what happens when you can stand up for doing the right thing by letting go of anger and animosity and holding peace in your heart.  Even when dealing with someone who is mentally ill.

F is a hoarder.  I really saw the reality of this, not only with the cabin, but when S got his metal filing box out of storage.  He had canceled checks in with his military papers.  Which wouldn’t be odd except the canceled checks were from 1968 on up. Why he felt the need to keep them shall remain a mystery to me.

The ‘cabin’ is a slope roofed one room shack my father-in-law and husband built over fifteen years ago.  It is slowly falling apart and F never tried to keep it up.  S was the one who put new tarpaper on the roof last year to keep it from leaking.

Beds made to military precision, give or take. Floor shoveled clean of the dog shit coated clothes. He threw those down on our burn pile. That’s will smell nice. Guess we won’t be roasting marshmallows this year….

Now, this is what the place looked like the day he left, after we had that two hour palaver the night before. Holy shit, is that floor I see?

Yes, the cans really ARE all gone! Double take! I can’t believe my camera.

Do I detect the tang of Pine-sol in the air? Amazing what a shovel and a little scrubbing can do for that can collection. They hauled them to the dump, too!

This is a view in the front door. You can see my father-in-laws wood cook stove that F used as counter space. There are cans and garbage all in front of it. The floor is coated in dirt, probably dog shit and who knows what else.

The ‘kitchen’ area to the right. Years of food cans and garbage. The linoleum under this all is white, honest.

His heat source and overflowing ash pan for the woodstove. Honestly, I don’t know how he didn’t burn the place down. That’s Cindy Lou sitting in the chair where she had given birth to her pups. S has taken her to live in town now.

Inside to the left. He always made his bed. That’s my dog, Copper, coming in to check out the one that is hiding under the bed. I usually don’t let my dog’s anywhere near this place but he is current on his shots. There is clothes, dirt and most likely dogshit on the floor here too. The bed across has F’s clothes and other crap.

Yet it is real.  I don’t know if you can understand how miraculous this was.  This man, who has never batted and eye at letting not only dogs, but livestock, and I am talking sheep and goats, geese and pigs, in the house to live, eat and shit without ever cleaning it up.  He did this.  He cleaned his house!

This is the same man who would sit in the living room of S’s house over east in a living room that’s rug was soaked so thoroughly with dog urine it squelched with every step, and watch television as the dogs shit on the rug in front of him.

To me, this is evidence that Divinity is at work.  There is a spirit at work here that is stronger than the shit.  This is the miracle that turns shit into black gold.  This is the proof.

S and my father-in-law B seemed a little stunned at F’s  abrupt departure.  I don’t think my mother-in-law quite knew how to deal with the reality. F has been a fixture in her life for over twenty years now.  She never wanted to deal with him, but never made a move to cut him loose either.  This shall forever be a puzzle to me. 

The night GM called to tell her F had gone with his brother, I could hear her voice on the other end of the line.  When she said “Oh.” it sounded higher than her usual speaking voice.  Tremulous.  I wondered.  Did this mean there was a part of her that was actually sorry to see him gone?  Even though this was the man who had told her the mountain wasn’t big enough for the both of them and she should go live with her daughter.  Yet, what was I supposed to do?  I will gladly take on burdens for my family when the cause is just, when the need is real, but I will not  enable someone to use and abuse my family.  I will not allow someone to latch on to us as a drowning victim dragging their savior to the depths.

When I told S he had cleaned to the cabin up,  that he had even used a cleaner (probably even on that one white floor patch!) her mouth actually dropped open.  She was honest to goodness stunned when I told her that.  Said he had never lifted a finger EVER in the twenty-some-odd years they had been together to help her clean.  Not even the animal pens.

I couldn’t explain to her the how or why.  We don’t see things the same way.  I couldn’t explain to her that you can kick someone in the ass and do it with love.  I just don’t think that is the language that they have ever known.  I don’t know if S will ever understand that showing someone you love them doesn’t mean doing everything for them until they are crippled with the inability to do for themselves.  That is not love.  That is something else entirely and it has dark origins, no matter the intent behind it.

After F had left, and in the middle of the night when the large drink of water before bed finally ran its course and woke me, I went outside.  I heard something that I didn’t know I would ever here.  A bull elk bugling.  Our mountain, years and years ago used to have a lot of elk.  GM said he hadn’t seen any for over fifteen years.  I heard it another night, then again last night, just about dusk.  His bugling set the dogs off up at F’s old place where they still stay.  Excited, I went in to tell GM.  He told me he had been watching one of the home movies he recently made with he and our big white dog Fen on it.  He said Fen was howling on the movie.  This annoyed me.  I can tell the difference between and elk bugle and a dog howl for shit’s sake!  I snapped at him a bit.  He got a little mad back and told me angrily that he hadn’t seen elk up here in twenty years.

As we are learning to do now, we went our own ways for a few minutes.  We are trying (slowly) to pick our battles.  When we passed each other again on the trail down to our outhouse I stopped and looked at him.  I knew what I needed to say.

“When you pray for healing to come to a place, when you pray for good things to come back, they do.”

I continued down the path, and he watched me in silence.

At the Brink of the Season’s Turn

I have captured a rare moment. I have sent my youngest child to an evening nap and the rest to the school playground. I am here at my Mother’s house stealing some coveted moments alone with my thoughts.

I have run out an amazing amount of outdoor extension cord to plug in my husband’s laptop so I can write outside. Autumn is my time. I was born in the September cusp, and have always felt most energized in this season of the Sleeping Time To Come.

The leaves of the elm tree across the alley are beginning to yellow at the top, that first concession to the long sleep. The shorter peach trees, those compost heap volunteers my Mother takes such pride in, stand firm and green. Their leaves are puckered at the top, and sides because they really do hate the climate here. My Mother, however, sprays them in the spring with copper sulfate to stave off whatever botanical horrors await them and keep them clinging to the life. They did not bloom or try to bear fruit this year because of late spring frost. Personally, I hope they learn to tough it up an acclimatize, if for no other reason than my mother is proud to grow peaches in a Montana town so close to the Canadian border.

House finches hang off the feeders she has on the clotheslines to the left of me. Various shades of gray they are, with a rosy blush to their breasts. Not as fearful as some birds. There is free food of the black oil sunflower variety available, after all! The chickadees are more leery, using the cover of the peach trees to hide. One loan pigeon takes up residence on the poser line across the alley. After determining I am of little threat it flies to eat the sunflower seeds of the ground under the squirrel feeder. Pigeons always have such a startled look on their faces. As if they are quite astounded to see anyone nearby who doesn’t have feather and just don’t know what to make of it.

I am waiting for my husband to come home after his class at the college. I have found a few precious moments to find some inner peace. I just started college myself. I finally found out what I want to do when I grow up! I have entered the Natural Resources Conservation and Management AAS program. I initially only wanted to finish what I started ten years ago, six or so credits short of my AS degree. Yet when the advisor I saw told me of the AAS program, I began to feel a fire in my belly I haven’t felt in years.

After all, I live it, right? Living in the great outdoors, pioneer style. What I don’t tell a lot of people is that I also talk to trees, plants and bugs. Okay, my husband is finally catching on, after nine years. My kids see it. They’ve learned it from me, even. I have always talked to them. Ever since I was very small. Not expecting an answer, mind you. (At least not NOW as a grown up!) Though sometimes, if I listen hard enough, I think I can feel some song of communication between the wind and branches…

When I was a child, I had imaginary friends. I can remember their names even now. I guess it was motivation by loneliness that caused me to seek them out. I learned to talk to bugs when I was small. I learned to talk to trees after I learned to smoke pot. Sitting here now in this yard, the back yard I grew up in, I can see my past more clearly than anywhere else. The once large gardens, now merely a small portion of what they were when my father was alive. Memories of the peace he and I had when I was small, before I grew up enough to have my own mind and test my own will. Sitting on his lap under the summer sky in a reclining lawn chair as he ran a blade of grass over my face, trailing tickle tingles over my cheeks then around one nostril until I absolutely couldn’t stand it and had to rub the tickle off.

I came to learn most of what I know about the beauty, grace and magic of the natural world from my Father. It hasn’t been until my Father went to walk in the spirit world that I came to understand that most of what I also know about abusiveness and how I have chosen my relationships stems from my Father as well.

I have wondered where my Hard Look series would take me. At this point I am just trying to open myself to Divine Guidance in whatever form it comes. I have been told for years I have a gift of writing. I have begun to pray that I can use that writing to help others. Because of the paths my life has taken, because of the pains and triumphs I have faced in my own life, I know but a few things. Peace, forgiveness and faith. I know we are not alone. I know Something, Somewhere, hears our silent pleas and while we may not always understand the ways in which It answers, It is there. Call it what you like.

I know now that this time, the time we have now, is what is most important. What this nation this world, needs now is warriors. Warriors of belief and faith. Not indoctrinated, brainwashed sheep, but warriors who have earned their armor from the suffering they have endured and sacrifices they have made. Those of us who have swum the Dark River and lived to tell the tales. Stronger, wiser, perhaps a bit more cynical from our endeavors, but bettered for it. Those of us willing to stand up for what we believe in, in our personal lives and no matter how big or small. Those of us willing to stand up and assist those who may not be able, at first, to stand on their own.

After all, that is the sacred gift of a Mother, isn’t it? To nurture those who cannot at first nurture themselves? We set by example. I know now, after a lot of fuck ups, that my children will live as the see me live. They will do as they see me do. What is it I want to see my children doing?

Often, as an American society, we focus so much on the downside of ourselves. What if we instead, focused on the possibilities? What if we, instead, focused our babies on the possibilities? I have not been the worlds best parent. I have carried my father’s rage and my mothers selfishness into my parenting. But I do not want to continue this. I do not want my children to live and feel about themselves as I have. I want more for these amazing people I have given birth to and welcomed into my life. They own the tomorrows, and, barring some huge cataclysmic disaster, they own the future. What is it I can do to make this bridge a strong one for them? What do I have to do?

This is an answer that we can only find in our own hearts, as individuals. I have recently re-discovered my faith in the Divine. I do this periodically over the years. Actually, I think I am on a ten year cycle. This one took me thirteen years and I hope I have finally found my way home.

Sometimes I think I may come off as a crackpot and I feel afraid. I fear that someone may judge me in ignorance or sheer stupid cruelty. I have seen it happen to my favorite blogger, Crystal from http://www.mcknob.com on her Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper blog. Yet from her I have also learned that sometimes you just have to say “Damn the consequences!” and post what you need to anyway. I am praying for her family and tragic personal loss they are going through right now.

I wonder if this will pan out, or if someone that knows me personally may find it and be offended. I wonder if I share too much or not enough.

Then I think, Ah, what the hell! and continue on anyway. I am stubborn like that.

I can only put out here the lessons I have learned. My own experience be it good or bad. I can only hope it will help someone somewhere see a little humor or find a little hope. Mostly what I hope for is that it helps to make a connection. A connection between states, across boundaries. That is gives a voice to the wide and invisible world out here. That it lets someone out there know they are not alone.

The Lakota have a saying; mitakuye oyasin. We are all related. I believe in finding common ground.