loss

Knocking on Heaven’s Door

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I spent the past week at home attempting to get through a bout of influenza. It began on Saturday night with a heavy headache and by Sunday mid morning I was on my way to the ER with a fever and the stomach turning effects of taking two types of cold medications too close to one another.

There is something to be said about the calming effect that a hospital brings. No, seriously! When you have been in the ER as many times as I have, the plastic crunch of a hospital mattress, the sterile smells, and the incessant beeping of various machines is comforting. You know, for the most part, that you are safe now. You know that you are in capable hands that will make you get better and if things get worse, at least you won’t die alone at home in the bathroom in that raggy robe covered in cat hair.

My first stint in the ER was at the age of 3 when my dad suffered a massive heart attack. Mom put me in an umbrella stroller and rolled me up and down the halls, not so much for my entertainment but to calm her own nerves. I remember the smells of bleach cleaner, hot food that had no flavor, and a slightly metallic smell that I have never been able to place. So fascinated was I by this world of people moving briskly and importantly down shiny halls wearing snow white jackets and speaking in tongues about charts and MRIs, that I failed to realize the seriousness of my dad’s condition; I thought that giant of a man was merely sleeping. Halfway through my dad’s recovery a nurse shot him up with 3 times the amount of morphine he was supposed to have and Dad went up to knock on heaven’s door for the second time that week. The nurse was later caught after a number of patients were killed as a result of her “mercy” Killings. Dad survived and after a bout of pneumonia he was released to go home.

Things changed ever so slightly after Dad came home. The shiny packs of Marlboros disappeared, Mom was cooking out of a book entitled “Don’t Eat Your Heart Out”and Dad seemed humbled in a way. He spent more time playing with me. I was able to convince him to turn a giant box from our new microwave into a boat in which we had many high sea adventures. I am sure that in that hospital bed my dad, like every one else who has ever looked death in the eye, made a bargain with God that he would change his ways if only he was given more time on this earth.

I have been on the sending end of many such prayers in my own life. At age 5 laying on the operating table before tonsil surgery as the doctor asked me if I wanted grape or bubble gum scented knock out gas I remember promising God that I would never get in trouble at school again and that I would not ask for another matchbox car as long as I lived. Then the grape scented gas filled my nostrils like that first whiff of a Mr Sketch purple marker. Oh how I coveted a set of those markers but my Mom viewed fruit scented markers as a gateway drug of sorts so I had to get my fix at friend’s houses and in the waiting room of the dentist office. Waking up from surgery I was an instant celebrity. The doctors and nurses could not stop exclaiming over how large my tonsils had been. They made it sound like I had been born out of nuclear run off and was able to produce monster sized useless organs that wowed the medical world. My hospital bed was covered in new toys, balloons hung from the tray table, and there was a never- ending supply of popsicles and ice cream. I had died inside a Mr Sketch marker and woke up in heaven!!

My subsequent hospital visits were never as lucrative as the day my tonsils were removed but in a way they mirrored each other. There were the prayers, the promises, the feeling of being safe and the belief that when I woke up everything was going to be better. Isn’t that what we all experience when faced with a serious illness or medical event? Laying on that lumpy bed as a haggard nurse attempts to poke us with a dull needle we are blatantly reminded of our mortality. We bargain with God and make promises to be better people and to never ever take our health for granted again. We lay there in a fit of self-pity and illness induced misery cursing all the days we wasted while we were healthy. We frantically write bucket lists in our heads of all the things we are going to do once we bust out of the hospital.

But, as is true almost every time, we arrive home, saved from the brink of death, go to work the next day and forget completely all the plans and promises we made to improve our lives. As with New Year’s resolutions, promises made on one’s near death-bed are quickly forgotten once life kicks in again. Like a bloodthirsty landlord, life is demanding to the point that we feel selfish when we try to work on ourselves and insignificant when we try to make a difference for others.

I too have failed miserably at following through with my grand plans but found other ways to make things happen. So many times I vowed to join a fitness club then look through the windows of a 24 hour fitness facility to see all those other women in their synchronized Fabletics outfits and I turn around, put on my boots and start hiking the hills and woods of my home. I plan to volunteer then run across a child whose family home burned down and I buy her a replacement for the beloved toy she lost in the fire. I take food to those who don’t have family, I help out the instant I see someone in need. Yes volunteer organizations are wonderful and necessary but sometimes you can’t wait for a group to find an area of need to work on. Sometimes you just need to go out into the world and help on your own with no coordinator or committee. Afterall, didn’t those who have made the most difference in this world throughout history start out with a single act of kindness?

The problem with life is we make things too complicated for ourselves so that the simplest of things turn in to major undertakings that require too much of our already depleted energy. We fail to get started and so we set aside our plans all together only to write them down again when some disaster befalls our lives. Hospital beds are a comfort but also that place where we are allowed too much time in which our lives flash before our eyes and we depress ourselves when we see how little we have accomplished. By what measure do we gauge the success of our efforts? A very inaccurate one I would suspect.

The point of all of this is that sometimes life gives us wakeup calls. Sometimes we are thrown against the wall and reminded of our mortality for a moment and then we are returned to our everyday routines. The choice is ours what to do with the extra time we have been blessed with because we all know that it could go either way. Our lives can be snuffed out in an instant with no second chance to make our mark on this world. I was reminded of this recently when someone very dear to me passed away suddenly. He was diagnosed with leukemia and within two weeks we had lost him. For a year he had battled pneumonia and diabetes then the leukemia. I watched him go from making plans to do more in the years he thought he had left to just saying “I cannot fight anymore.”

My plea to all of you is to do everything. Put nothing off until later or tomorrow or next month. Do not wait for a catastrophic event to wake you up to the reality that there is no tomorrow there is just right here and right now. Open that door for the lady with her arms full of groceries, pay for the order of the person in line behind you, make a child smile, cook something and share it with a neighbor who has no one to share a meal with. You do not have to be Mother Teresa to make a difference. Just shut off your mind and all its voices telling you to stay out of it or that you don’t have time or that you won’t make a difference. Wake up and let your heart do what it was designed to do, just love.

Ashes in a Shell Casing

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My first experience with cancer was at the age of 6 when 3 of my dad’s former coworkers came down with brain cancer. They had been sign painters in the 1960s in a basement paintroom with no ventilation. It was just a matter of time before breathing in those toxic fumes would catch up with them and it did, with a vengeance.

I remember going with my parents to visit one of the men. He went by the nickname of “Sparrow” a strange name for a tall, strapping, dark haired handsome man. When we arrived at the nursing home in Jordan, it was like something out of a child’s worst nightmare. A huge building of red brick built in the early 1900’s with the look of a horror story sanitorium. The halls were dark, ceilings low and confining, the paint was peeling from iron stair rails, and the smell of bleach, urine, and death filled the air.

Sparrow was in a room on the third floor. A dreary dark and silent room with only the gasp of a respirator to break the silence. The atmosphere was one of waiting. Waiting for this once strong and active man to pass or waiting for him to suddenly wake up from his morphine and cancer induced coma.

His hair was still dark, untouched by the frost of age. His skin was sallow but clear, his hands at his side’s were still massive and bore scars from years of hard work. A hose attached to his trachea took the breaths his lungs could no longer draw on their own. Before us was the ruin of a man I had once though of as a giant when we first met.

After years of lying unconscious, Sparrow died a day after our visit. It was as though he was waiting for that last conversation with my dad. To hear how his old workplace was functioning and to get the latest news about all his former friends before he was ready to give up the fight.

Jump forward 15 years and my junior year in college. I was a happy college student at the top of my class. I spent most of my time studying but had met a young man who became a best friend and someone I could see myself dating. A month after we met I went with my parents to a doctor’s appointment for dad to have his colonoscopy. Sitting in the waiting room I never expected the doctor to call my mother and I into his office to tell us that dad had colon cancer.

A tumor the size of a baseball and 13 inches of his colon were removed a week later and life was thrown drastically into perspective. My college friend was with me through it all in the form of daily phone calls and emails of support and encouragement. I fell in love.

Dad’s cancer was contained to that one tumor by the grace of God and he avoided the misery of chemo and radiation. He wasn’t the same after the surgery either. Fear and his own brush with mortality had aged him.

About the time we were getting the good news about my dad’s prognosis my friend back at college found out his grandmother had lung cancer. I had not met her yet but she had raised my friend practically from infancy to adulthood so this was a particularly hard blow.

The 8 years I spent dating her grandson, we saw Grandma Pat in and out of the hospital. She would get healthy then have to go in for more rounds of Chemo. In the end she was at home unconscious in a hospital bed. I could not leave her side. So I would sit up every night with her, holding her hand while her children squabbled over who would inherit what. I loved Pat with all my heart and even when her grandson and I were getting ready to break up the last thing she ever said to me was ” I don’t care what they say about you, you are a good woman and I love you!”

Those words coming from a woman who once owed 30 Arabian horses, drove all over the country by herself to show her horses, was married to a chronic cheater, and had to help run a resort that was not her dream, meant more to me than any compliment I could ever receive.

Pat took her last breath on new years eve 2008. The funeral was an epic event with people lined up outside to offer condolences well into the night. I gave the eulogy, and while the words I spoke are a distant memory I will never forget how my simple reminders of how great a woman Pat was, forced her family to stop their bickering if only for a moment and remember how blessed they were to have had her as a mother, wife, grandmother, and friend.

Finally, my most recent experience with cancer was the diagnosis of leukemia for the greatest man I ever knew, my “dad” Charlie. Charlie was the kind of man people pray to have as a father. He was selfless, kind, intelligent, understanding, loving, and most of all the kind of man who made me smile every time he walked into the room. From the first day I met him he took me under his wing and accepted me, flaws and all. Charlie believed in me, he believed in me when no one else in my life ever did. He encouraged my art, enjoyed spending time with me, and treated me like an equal. We conversed about everything from tools to guns to my goats of which he got such a kick out of. I loved him with all my heart and in his own gruff way I think he loved me too.

This past fall Charlie was diagnosed with Leukemia. A month later I was sitting with the family by his hospital bed as he took his last breath. Again, someone so strong, so full of life, so incredible, so loved was brought down by something that none of us have the power to stop. I remember praying over and over for God to let me take his place because he had a family, children. Grandchildren who needed him when all I was was a broke receptionist who would never be half the person Charlie was. But life and God don’t work that way as so here I am left behind with Charlie’s memories, some if his ashes in a rifle shell casing hanging from the rearview mirror of the truck that was once is and is now mine to remind me of a man I loved more than any man who has ever entered my life.

Today I went in for a cancer test of my own, I am writing this in the waiting room as a matter of fact. I will have no fear, no anger, no bitterness no matter what the results may be. I am ready for what life throws at me because I have faith on my side, the love of family and of friends, and the determination that nothing will get me down or try to prevent me from living life on my terms. I have been blessed 10 fold in my life and as they say “You only live once but if you do it right, once is enough.”

To Move or not to Move

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Have you ever been faced with a decision that involves turning your entire life upsidedown?

My 83 year old father needs me and my family has asked me to move back up to the area where I grew up so Dad could live with me on a hobby farm.

Suddenly all I have been working towards may be right at my fingertips but at the wrong location on the map. My life along the Mississipi may be far from ideal but everything I love is here. Hunting, fishing, the river and bluffs which I lose myself in when I need a moment to myself. Can I find that kind of peace back home?

I have been one who is able to adapt to whatever surroundings I find myself in and some how find something to love about that place. I know I could do the same if I moved but is a move what I need?

I see in my minds eye the farm I always dreamed of owing with a barn, chicken coop, granary, and charming farm house. I see myself holding classes on cheese making using milk from my goats, canning, quilting, making hay with my own equipment, giving Dad the quality of life he deserves and a place for him to putter around.

Then I think about my life here. The backwater marsh where I duck hunt and disappear into when I need a break from the world. Russet sunrises over the water, whistling wings overhead, frost on cat tails, and feathers floating on mirror-like ponds. The deep forests of the bluffs which I climb to hunt deer, turkey, antler sheds, and morel mushrooms. Those moments of awe when oak give way to cedar groves carpeted in rubicund needles and velvety moss the color of emeralds. The view from the cliffs when you can see the sweep of the Mississippi; a seemingly slow, lazy giant whose personality is as attuned to the weather as the tide is to the moon. Long days spent on frozen backwaters pulling dinner from beneath the ice with just the cry of a bald eagle on ice kissed air to let you know you are not entirely alone.

My love for this place is palpable, undeniable, and unending but so too is my love of family. So I asked my dad today during my break what he wanted from me. He said he is overwhelmed by everything but he was thinking of selling his house and getting an apartment by Mom’s nursing home. He didn’t sound convincing, I could hear him giving up by the tone of his voice. For all our differences we are alike in the color of our eyes and the fact that we cannot be confined or contained to a vanilla apartment with no yard to care for, no view to contemplate over morning coffee, and no use for hands that itch for work.

I nervously brought up the subject of moving and he instantly started jabbering away about a Ford 8N he saw for sale and a hay rake and baler. The excitement in his voice was something akin to that of a child discussing a trip to Disney. So now, I am torn. Tomorrow he may change his mind and stubbornly refuse to leave the house he has lived in for 50 years, I never know what to expect from him.

As for me, I will do what I always do and play it by ear. And if there is one thing I have learned since Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s is that the disease is more of a rollercoaster for the family than it is for the person with the illness. Mom is happy and content in her new home and she knows she is sick but makes due. As for the rest of us, the fear, uncertainty, expense, loneliness of missing mom as she used to be, and all of the sudden changes are paying a toll. I wish I could just buy a farm, move everyone in and go back to the good old days but life doesn’t work that way. So I guess you can just count the blessings, enjoy that which you do have, and adapt to whatever comes next. Never think that things can’t change because they can and they will whether you are ready or not. As in control as you think you are there are bigger hands that hold your life in their palms and you just have to trust that everything, good or bad, happens for a reason.

Too Late or Just in Time

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I was born in the wrong time period.

How many of you say that to yourselves daily as you make your 5 mile 3 hour commute to go sit in a cubicle and stare at a computer screen until it feels like there is an ice pick prodding at your brain while the phone shrills incessantly?

I tell myself daily that someone who is as unhappy as I am with the modern world had to have been meant for a different era in history. By some cosmic fluke, my birth was delayed until the late 20th century and here I am clinging to the old ways while cursing the slowness of my internet connection.

I often pour over images on the web of one room cabins, fires ablaze in the hearth, rag rugs on the floor, a wide front porch with golden domed fruit pies cooling on the rail, a root cellar lined with glass jars filled with delicously colorful contents, a barn with a scattering of animals, and the peace and slight fear that comes with knowing that you are the only person around for miles. The idealized Laura Ingalls Wilder lifestyle complete with calico and maple sugarings calls out to me more and more the older I get.

I wonder about that kind of life, long for it sometimes and wish I could just walk away from everything to lose myself in a deep forest cabin.

I am not the only one, I am certain of that. Many of us want noting more than the serenity of solitude. To have time unspoiled by electronic devices, to be left to our own devices. We want this freedom yet remained chained to the very things that hold us back.

Hours that could be spent acting on our dreams are spent living vicariously through the posts of others. Heads down, fingers flying over a stylized keyboard, we fail to look up and around us to see the world in its entirety because it is easier to view it through a 6 inch screen.

Our concepts of the beauty of the earth and of people has been distorted by built in filters. An instant face lift in the palm of our hands allows us to alter our appearance so as to get more likes on social media. We erase lines, change eye color, add length to our lashes to the point where we are disappointed when we dont see that exact avatar in the mirror looking back at us.

Everything is contrived we feign concern for others, give a crying emoji and keep on scrolling. We get people to fall in love with us through messenger with daily messages, flirtatious, canned compliments at just the right time and then ignore the person for days. We toy with emotions because there are no consequences. We post our stories only to have Keyboard warriors attack like pit bulls in a ring when in real life they are de-nutted poodles in their mom’s basement.

This is why I cling so firmly to the old ways. The practice of going visiting on a Saturday, baking pies for elderly friends, helping out those in need, canning enough each year to share, quilting, raising livestock, hunting, fishing, surviving alone.

I am not ashamed to be politically incorrect by having pride in doing “women’s work” nor am I afraid to show pride in doing things that were formerly called “men’s work.” Yet the before mentioned keyboard warriors are quick to pounce with their verbal warfare and mindless threats.

What have we become? We laugh at how archaic things were in the past while the past laughs at how backwards we have become. We are now fully connected yet people are more isolated than ever, we get through horrific events by blaming things and not people, we have manipulated the system so that everyone is a victim and not at fault for their actions, we lost our funny bone and, as a result our backbone, in that people are offended by everything, we turn our backs on neighbors and open the gates for strangers, our children starve while others feast but no one bats an eye, we just don’t care because we believe that there just is nothing to care about, we have given up, we just want to be left alone.

Yet, as they say, a flower can grow in the tiniest of cracks in a filthy sidewalk. So too can we flourish amid all the bad news, good news, fake news, what have you. How? By being old fashioned, for lack of a better term. Roll up your sleeves. Bake a pie and take it over to that old lady next door who spies on you through her blinds. While you are busy commenting on your Facebook friends dinner in Australia your neighbors Social Security check might not have covered groceries this month.

Go out and teach a kid something that doesn’t involve a smart phone or video game. Engage in real life conversations with people face to face rather than sending them a text from the next room. Take a class, learn to sew or make butter or to make something with your own two hands and your imagination. Build a shelter in the woods and camp out for a week with your phone turned off and your senses turned up to high. Eat food you grew yourself or harvested from the forest and waters. Survive and you will thrive and I am not talking about that patch people wear and shakes they drink. I’m talking the real deal, feeling like you are alive because you did something, created something, gave to others, pushed your limits, burned that box you felt safe in, lived.

So next time you say that you were born 100 years too late ask yourself why you can’t recreate all that was good about the past in your own life. Work hard for your dream as though your life depends on it (because it does), be a good person, simplify, be grateful for the little things, be a good neighbor, slow down, look up, look around, create, build, make memories, establish traditions, and just live. Don’t watch life through a 6 inch screen, go out and live it in real time!

The Power of a Smile

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A recent visit to the dentist revealed an abnormality in the X-rays of my jaw. A mass in my upper jaw and another one attached to the jaw bone beneath my tongue. This coming Friday they will get examined and tested for cancer.

Several years ago I was in a car accident that changed my life and took my smile. It took years for me to finally save up and have the kind of insurance that would allow me to get things properly fixed. The accident took more than my smile, it took my self esteem and caused the man I loved to turn away from me. He found someone new and used my problem as one of the many reasons why we didn’t work out. A man can’t love a woman who isn’t “whole.”

I smile all the time now and despite what my recent X-rays have uncovered it is not going to slow me down because I have so much to be grateful for and nothing to fear.

In the past 3 years so many things have happened in my life that I never thought would occur for me. I had some of my writings published in a magazine, I have drawings that I did for people hanging in homes across the country, I have been asked to be a brand ambassador for a new camo clothing company, I met someone who set me on fire and if only for a moment that someone made me feel beautiful for the first time in my life, I got 4 goats who have become my world, started a blog, I have a bright future to look forward to because I am finally cutting all the ties that held me back from moving forward, I am known for my smile, and I have touched lives. Yes me! I touched lives and that is so very important to me.

These may seem like small accomplishments to all of you but had you met me a few years ago you would have seen a woman with her head down stuck in a rut thinking she was never going to know love or happiness simply because she couldn’t smile.

Now I come forward with my story to hopefully inspire others who have similar experiences or who are facing scary health issues. You are not alone. For some of you it was not a car accident that stole your smile but perhaps life events or another person. To all of you I say smile anyway. Despite everything never give others the power to rob you of your happiness or your light. If someone tells you that you are unlovable due to a deformity or scars tell them that you are even more worthy of love because you survived. You made it through something that could have taken your life and even if the image in the mirror still reflects the pain you endured do not let the ghosts of what happened rob you of happiness now.

All too often the things that scare us most are not being loved and death. You know what scares Me? Dying before ever having truly lived but my fears are in vain because I know dang well I will never let that happen. To the fullest every day, every hour, every minute, every second!

I will repeat the age old saying of “never underestimate the power of a smile.” A single smile can change the lives of both the person giving and the person receiving it’s radiance and hope.

Little Blue Dress

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I remember silently opening the bottom drawer of my mother’s dresser when I was 7 years old. Inside were boxes of cheap paste jewelry, ornate hankies that smelled of sunshine and mom, baby keepsake books, and a dress.

The dress was the palest of blue, piped in white with pearly buttons, an impossibly tiny bodice accentuated a full calf length skirt. The style spoke of the demure 1950’s and it was beautifully handmade. It was my mother’s wedding dress.

On January 19, 1957 Joanne buttoned up a blue cotton dress with trembling fingers as her best friend Myra fussed over her hair. Dark, glossy ringletts fell from Joanne’s forehead matching dark chocolate color of her eyes. Sitting in front of a pitted mirror in the visitor’s quarters at Fort Chaffee, she touched up her bright cherry lipstick and was ready.

In front of the entire platoon, Joanne married the man of her dreams. 6ft tall and muscular, Duane filled out an army uniform in a way that turned heads and he knew it. Amid cheers and cat calls they sealed the deal with a kiss and prepared for a long life together.

Now, 60 years later, black and white photographs tell the story of their early years together, the two children that were born right away, and the years of struggling to make ends meet. It was not easy. Duane was a provider but he also liked his drinks and he loved his women. If he didn’t come home at night mom would load up the kids and drive to his favorite bars and ladies houses. Not to interrupt him, just to make sure he was safe and not dead in a ditch somewhere.

They stuck it out. Through hard times, infidelity, two heart surgeries that nearly killed my dad, all of the worst things that could happen in a marriage and now my Mom’s struggle with Alzheimer’s.

The woman who was once a fiesty 5ft tall, 100lb beauty is now an old woman sitting in a nursing home while the memories of her youth play tricks with her confused mind. She cries out for people who are long since deceased, she gets angry, she gets frustrated, she knows who I am and then she forgets. She holds my hand in a death grip then turns to caress my cheek with the kind of tenderness only a mother can show. She has become a contradiction. A once strong, smart, active woman reduced to wandering the halls of a place that is not her home, searching for that which is no longer there.

My father rages silently to himself about how things could have been different. How he wishes he would have changed the course of his life, moved to a different town when they had the chance to buy that restored ranch on two acres, and spent their money before the nursing home came and took it all.

Yet, amid all of his musings, he fails to find comfort in the fact that some people would give up all they own just to have a woman like my mother by their side if only for a day. He had 60 years of unconditional, unrelenting love from a woman who made everyone around her better from just basking in her light. My dad taught me about life, Mom taught me about love.

I will never have someone love me for 60 years, some of us do not even get the privilege of living 60 years, and the lesson in all of this is realizing what it is you have been blessed with before time runs out. Some of you have been together decades, some of you have lived alone for decades and are now just meeting the love of your lives, some of you are regretting never trying, while some of you may not have love but you are giving love to those in need. Of all the things that transpired in the past 60 years for my parents the one thing I learned is that unconditional love should never be taken for granted because few people have the strength and capacity to love the way my mom loved all of us and all of those around her. As my mom once said “With all your heart or not at all!”

Freidrich

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I am the kind of person who goes through life flying by the seat of her pants. I make flash decisions without doing all the research and yet live with no regrets. I have found that when I allow myself to ponder my ponderings turn to over thinking which turns to insecurity and thus, inaction. So I act quickly and worry about the consequences later.

I had been paying frequent visits to a friend’s dairy goat farm a year ago when one evening I entered the loafing barn and saw a tiny white and black newborn goat huddled in the straw while his mother munched on grain. He was an angel in my eyes. As white as new snow with just enough black markings to create a pleasant contrast. The sound of his bleating melted my heart and the feel of his velveteen muzzle nibbling on my fingers won me over completely.

He was to be sold as a meat goat I was told. My blood ran cold, I felt physically ill and knew I had to do something. I had some money at home from the sale of my ATV. I had a barn at my disposal, I was ready. I took home that sweet little boy and two more baby goats. A female Toggenburg which I named Marta, a female Nubian which I named Liesl, and of course my little boy whom I named Freidrich. 

What joy these babies brought to my life!! Early morning feedings with soda bottles fitted with nipples, sitting in the pen with them as they crawled all over me nibbling and pressing up against me for hugs and kisses. They filled a very large hole in my life, they brought me happiness that I never dreamed myself capable of. 

In May all of my happiness came to an end. Friedrich started yelling day after day as though he was in pain. I spoke with the farmer I got him from. He was silent on the phone and I feared the worst. At 8pm I rushed him to the emergency vet and at 9:30 he was taking his last breath. Friedrich had developed urinary tract stones and there was nothing they could do so I had to make the decision to wait until his bladder burst or allow him to pass peacefully without pain. Friedrich was 3 months old, he was my greatest comfort, my joy, my baby and he was lying lifeless in my arms. 

I was numb all the way home. Friedrich’s little body lay in the backseat wrapped in a towel, my heart was broken. Then I started crying, I cried for hours over the loss of life, over all the things I had been through in life that no one but that little goat could mend, I cried in loneliness, I cried in rage over how everyone I ever have loved either left me or died, I cried until I went still. I thought I would lose my mind, to be honest. 

Friedrich was buried under a pile of boulders in the new play area being constructed for my goats. Liesl and Marta called out for him day after day, I could not heal. Headaches were frequent, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t move on. People would tell me that he was just a goat, a farm animal, get over it. Those words hurt. I am not able to have children, my mom had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, things were not going well at work, and those goats were my only source of joy. 

After particularly bad days at work I would go out to the barn and Friedrich would be the first to come running. He would jump into my lap and snuggle his little head under my chin while I let my tears of frustration flow. He loved me, he was always so happy to see me, and he healed me in so many ways. How does one just simply “get over” that?

In June the farmer I got Friedrich from presented me with a tiny, floppy eared, Nubian buckling to help ease the pain of losing Friedrich. Then a couple weeks later he called with directions to a farm 2 hours south and when I got there the owner came out of the barn with a tiny, yet long legged, white and black Alpine buckling just like Friedrich. It was June 11th, my birthday.

Gunter and Gustav became my world. I kept them in the house and would wrap them in blankets so they could nap with me on the couch. They went with me all over and Marta and Liesl soon adopted them as their new brothers. My family was complete again. My heart was still broken but I had not lost the capacity to love.

Animals are great healers. Somehow they have the ability to enter our lives and make them better. They love unconditionally, do not judge, do not suddenly decide to stop loving you, and they give everything they have. I will never be fully over the loss of my Freidrich but his death taught me a very valuable lesson in how short life truly is, how things can change at the drop of a hat, and how you are never truly alive until you have loved someone so much that to lose them is like losing yourself.

Someday

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Perhaps one of the most depressing words in the English language is the word “Someday.” When I hear it spoken it always comes out with a hint of longing or regret. A word of defeat, a word of hope without hope, a word that, in some cases, is synonymous with “never.”

The older I get, the more I dispise the word “Someday” because it reminds me of how, no matter how many years, decades even, have gone by, my somedays just keep getting farther and farther away. Then I fall into berating myself for how much time I have wasted, how many mistakes I have made personally, financially, and spiritually. I get frustrated, I give up, I get motivated then fail to get started, I cry, I rage, but nothing changes.

I know I am not the only one caught in this web of wanting to move forward to our somedays but being held back by routine, lack of funding, lack of guidance, lack of ambition brought on by the sting of too many failures, bad relationship choices,  lack of faith in ones own self, etc…

To re-write a saying I once read; It is sad when you have failed so many times that you start saying “I’m used to it.” But, are bumps along the road really failure? I think not!! Refusing to get started is what constitutes failure, refusing to work hard at what we want is failure, refusing to keep trying, that is failure and I have failed more often than not.

45 minutes from my place of employment is a farm. It is for sale. 9 acres of woods and pasture, a white farmhouse with a porch, a red barn, an outdoor brick oven for baking… I see it in my minds eye, that utopia I have searched for, given up on, then searched for again. It exists, however, it is real and tangible, it is for sale. It is $269,00. It might as well be $269,000,000 that negative voice in my head tells me and in the tip of my tongue is that horrid word “Someday.”

I don’t want to wait for an obscure date in the future that may never come. I am tired of excuses for why I am not living the life I deserve because frankly I got right where I am because I didn’t do anything to deserve more. I refused to acknowledge that I am an artist who could be making money off of my art, I scoffed at the fact that companies wanted to publish my writings, I degraded myself to the point where I felt I was not worth working on. “Someday” I would pursuse those things, I said, just not today.

As we speak my mom sits in a nursing home not knowing where she is or even what day it is. Years ago she looked forward to her retirement and how “Someday” she would finish all those quilts she wanted to make. Well, here we are and all those somedays don’t mean a damn thing because time ran out. Mom will never sew again, never see new places, never have dreams to keep her going, or hopes for the future. 

I wonder what she would have done had she known what would transpire in her later years. Would she have stayed single, joined the WACS like she always talked about, would she have lived for more than just 3 children and a difficult husband? Or is what happened to her a glimpse into my own life’s mirror? A chance to throw a stone at the reflection and see more in the shards than what was displayed before?

9 acres, a home, a place to keep my goats, all of my somedays in one physical location, happiness, dreams coming true, a business of my own, freedom, how? By changing all of those somedays into someways, and some hows. Someday has no guarantees and I am tired of banking my future on that kind of uncertainty. We always think we have more time but the harsh reality is that we have less and less each day.  I may not get those 9 acres overnight but it will not be from a lack of trying. 

Christmas Cookies

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This time of the year the one thing I miss the most is baking Christmas cookies with my Mom. Every holiday season our baking was something akin to an Olympic event involving painstaking preparation and powerful tests of endurance. We would line up our ingredients, crank the Loretta Lynn Christmas album and get to work.

The first recipe on the docket was always the one for rolled sugar cookies because the dough had to chill in our “Polish Refrigerator” aka the un-insulated back porch, for a couple of hours to firm up to make the cut outs.

Everything was done from scratch from the fragrant smooth dough to the decadent icing tinted every color of the rainbow. Mom would pull open the stubborn bottom drawer of her kitchen cabinet, the one that always smelled of the brown sugar stored in the drawer above, and retrieve an ice cream pail full of cookie cutters as old as time.

In the yellow glow of the kitchen light the aluminim cutters reflected warmly on the worn Formica countertop. I would eagerly dig through the pile to find Santa with his gift bag, the snowflake, and my favorite leaping reindeer cutters, relieved that they survived another year.

With the table liberally dusted in flour, Mom would roll out sections of dough with a 50 year old rolling pin that creaked with each push. Silken dough, perfectly chilled, was rolled to 1/4 inch thickness before cutting into the cheerful shapes of the season. Hearts, diamonds, spades, Santa’s, reindeer, snowflakes, clubs, and stars covered well seasoned cookie sheets lined in parchment.

The cozy house soon filled with the scent of warm sugar, butter, and of home at Christmas. I would eagerly watch through the amber tinted glass of the oven door for the cookies to finish baking and then hours were spent in decoration. Mom would whip up a large batch of basic powdered sugar icing with just enough Watkins vanilla to turn simple into spectacular and set me to work with bowls for mixing colors.

Red for Santa was the most important and drop by drop from a tear shaped bottle of coloring would be added to achieve the correct hue. Containers of sprinkles emerged from the battered spice drawer perfumed with the exotic scents of cinnamon, allspice, and ginger. The icing was applied and quickly after the dusting of sprinkles, silver and gold baubles, and colored sugar that dyed fingers red and green.

Sheets of waxed paper spread across the dining room table like red carpets awaiting special guests. Soon, row upon colorful row of cookies littered the table painstakingly decorated by clumsy yet determined 7 year old hands. A Christmas mosaic of sugar laden artwork.

The memories of our special baking days sits neatly in the part of my heart reserved for that which I hold most dear. I cannot stir flour, butter, and sugar together without picturing Mom in her calico apron piped in peach fabric, her work worn hands gently guiding my soft childish ones in the making of so many recipes. Yes, one could say, the golden glow of a mother’s love never fades even when she is no longer capable of expressing it.

With this post from Christmas Past I wish to share with you our favorite rolled sugar cookie recipe so that you too can create memories to cherish like mine.

Corn Syrup Cookies

1 1/4 cup sugar

1 cup butter at room temp

2 eggs

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

Dash of salt

1 1/2 teaspoons of Watkins Pure Vanilla Extract

1/4 cup corn syrup

Beat sugar and eggs until lemon yellow. Add syrup and vanilla, stir in dry ingredients to make a smooth dough. Chill 2 hours. Roll out on floured surface and cut into shapes with cookie cutters.

And at 350° on parchment lined cookie sheets until the edges are slightly golden. When cool, ice with your favorite icing.

The Art of Giving Thanks

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I am well enough aware that the internet and blogging community will be full of Thanksgiving posts speaking volumes on the origins and meaning of the Holiday. I will not try to veer from that theme but merely share my thoughts and memories about a the day we all gather to give thanks.

At 5am the motor fired up on Mom’s ancient meat grinder as she fed through it’s churning blades the various and unexpected ingredients for Grandma Lenzen’s German stuffing. I would pull the covers over my head in an attempt to drown out the incessant noise to no avail. Mom and Dad made preparing Thanksgiving dinner for the 6 of us sound like they were creating a feast for the 7 kingdoms. Dad would bark orders, Mom would scurry around the tiny kitchen dicing here, peeling there, stirring this, and mashing that. I watched, learned and then crept off to find the turkey coloring page in the newspaper while watching Macy’s parade on TV.

Then came the wait, and I’m not talking about waiting on the food. The wait for my sister and her husband to make the 30 minute drive to our house which seemed to take them 40 days and 40 nights. When they finally arrived, my sister would unpack her kidney shaped Tupperware container of 7 layer salad and I would go about the business of snatching off as many hard boiled egg slices as I could while no one was looking.

When it was finally time to eat, we all gathered around that old butternut table, said Grace, and dug in. Each flavor was one to savor, so familiar yet foreign in the fact that it had not been partaken of in an entire year. We ate until our eyes bulged then Mom wold bring out dented aluminum pans filled with desserts and we would eat again.

Dishes were washed and games played while Bing Crosby crooned in the background about a white Christmas. It was a cozy time, a time to soak in all the love and comfort that a small family shares. A time to make memories and to recall old ones to laugh over again. I miss those days.

Since being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, my mom can no longer commandeer the kitchen. Part, a huge part, of the Holiday cheer has vanished. The food doesn’t taste the same because her hands and her love are not preparing it. The memories are not as funny, home doesn’t quite feel like home anymore. Yet, time goes on.

Change is something we expect in life except when it comes to the holidays. We never want to see that picture postcard Thanksgiving or Christmas of our childhood to ever end. The holidays are the one thing we can still count on as adults to give us the wonder of being a child again. We look for Santa at the mall, we gaze fondly at brightly wrapped presents, we snatch colorfully iced cookies off of sugar laden trays, and we watch Christmas programs on TV just to capture the nostalgia of a time when innocence had not yet been lost to the demands of adulthood.

Like a time machine, boxes of decorations take us back as we unwrap memories with each ornament. We prepare food that has the flavor of times long past that allow us to cling to happy memories of moments that will never be again.

For me, the holidays may have lost a bit of their cheer but I give thanks for the memories I do have of a warm home, good food, and family. Although things will never be the same perhaps it is a sign that it is time to make changes of my own. To share the blessings, invite new members to my circle, volunteer more and give others the chance to expierece the holidays through my eyes. Giving thanks is not to be isolated to one day but something practiced the year over. The gifts of the season are not to be contained in boxes and stockings but to pour forth from full hearts and believing souls. So, on this approaching Thanksgiving I wish all of you the very best and challenge you to make one change in your routine that includes touching a life that might not otherwise have reason to celebrate. God bless.