Perils Prior to Poultry Princessin'

Before I was a nurse…before I was a poultry princess…I was a home health aide. I made decent money, and traveled from house to house, doing light cleaning and cooking and helping with usual daily activities like bathing or grocery shopping for the elderly. If  I had a good house, with sweet people and a supportive family, it was wonderful. Most of the houses I went to were good country folk that just needed a little help, their sons and daughters busy with children and jobs and homes of their own.  There were exceptions…like the family that thought nothing of having 40 people over for a big fish fry on a Saturday night..and leave ALL the greasy dishes and left over food…til Monday morning. I cannot describe the smell of 2 day old coleslaw and fish bones left in an un-air conditioned kitchen for two days, not to mention the dishes piled high, here and there, not even rinsed off. The only people who lived in the house were the husband and wife, the husband too disabled to do the dishes…the wife too confused. I called the office…I had another house I had to be at in 2 hours and this would take all day. My boss told me to wash enough dishes for the couple to use for 2 days…leave everything else. Just getting the sink cleaned out enough to wash a few dishes took so long…I got all I could done, did some laundry, helped the wife with her bath…and had to leave for my next house.

  My boss called the daughter that was in charge and informed her that I was not allowed to do the whole family’s dishes from a fish fry over the weekend. The daughter EXPLODED and announced she didn’t think it was that big of a deal for “that GIRL” to do a few dishes. What the daughter didn’t know was my boss had driven to the house, taken pictures of the kitchen then left. She informed the daughter that either she followed the rules OR she didn’t get help from ANY “girls”. The daughter got snotty and that’s when my boss said “I can just put these pictures of rotting food in your file…the food you left out for your confused mother to eat by accident. She could get food poisoning and die. This could potentially get your mother taken out of the home.”

   After that, I went back and was greeted coolly, but I did my job and everything went fine, until one day, the husband called and demanded a “girl” come up that very moment to help with something.

  My boss tried to move people around, but this was in the days before cell phones, so she couldn’t get a hold of me. She tried to send someone else, a sweet lady that had been an aide for 20 years, but the husband refused. “I ain’t got to time tell ev’body where stuff IS. Send MY girl or don’t send a girl at all!”

  So…I guess we all got fired and I never knew what happened to that couple after that. I occasionally will drive down that road and see that house…it’s practically falling over, but people still live there.

   Once, I took care of an old man that his wife died literally the day before I was supposed to start at his house. He had had a stroke 15 years previously that left him paralyzed on his right side, but his mind was sharp. He had a slow witted son that lived with him that fancied himself a cowboy and thought I was his personal maid. He treated me disrespectfully and got angry because once I accidentally hung one of his dad’s shirts in his closet. He called my boss to tattle on my laziness and stupidity. The next time I was in the office,  my boss pulled me aside and said “Are you doing the son’s laundry, too?” I said yes I was and that I didn’t mind as long as he was sweet about it. But of course,  a month or so later, I  did it again and he met me at the door, rudely insisting I GET IT RIGHT. I smiled and said sweetly “ oh, I will NEVER do that again! NEVER! mostly because I’m not even supposed to be doing your laundry at all! You can do it yourself to make sure it gets done exactly the way you want!”  And…I never did his laundry again.

     But before the laundry incident…the old man wanted me to take his wife’s clothes and donate them. So I went after work one day and sacked up her personal belongings with him watching and talking about this outfit or that. I told him I was going to go thru them when I got home and sort them out to the places to give them away.

   I carried the sacks inside my house and started going thru them. Clint and Trevor played and watched TV. I was pregnant with Tara and was grateful for a chore that I could do sitting down.

     I pulled out one of those Christmas gifts you see at Walmart, cheap…people buy them when they really don’t know what to get a woman…a decorative box with a small purse and matching necklace and earrings. It looked brand new , but had been opened. There was a huge bulge in the purse. I took off the clear plastic lid, thinking there was some Kleenex or something left in it. I unzipped the little red purse.

                                                  I closed it back up immediately and gasped.

  I looked up at Clint, my mouth hanging open. He said “what is it?” I handed him the purse. He unzipped it and pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills and twenties.  He counted it. “eight hundred and forty dollars.” he said.

   I got up and went to the phone. I called my boss and told her what had happened. I told her I would take it back to the old man the following morning.

  The next morning, I walked into his house. He was sitting in his chair as usual and greeted me warmly. I sat across from him and pulled out the money. He stared at it for a moment and said “what’s this?” I told him about the purse and that I had looked very carefully in all the other stuff but that’s all I found. $840. He said “my wife was getting confused before she died. I had found some of the money she had hid, but I guess I missed this” He looked at me, perplexed. “why’d you bring it back? why didn’t you keep it? You’ve got that little boy, and another one on the way. I know you could have used it. Did your husband know?” I said, yes, Clint was aware of how much money I had found. “He didn’t want to keep it either? I never would have known, you could have just kept it and spent it, and I never would have known.” He had tears in his eyes. “I never would have known.”

       I patted him and gave him a hug and said to him what Clint and I still say when we talk about it.

“maybe you wouldn’t have known, but God would. And so would we. And…we  like to sleep at night.”

                                                 

                                                        We sleep very well. God bless.

Rough Times on the School Bus

Invariably, when I run into someone I went to school with, they will say at some point “hey! you and your brother and sisters rode my bus!” There’s a good chance every person I went to school with can say that with surety. We moved often. Bobbie and I counted up here a while back and we came up with….20. That’s the houses we can remember. We lived in one house two different times and moved 3 times in one year. I once woke up in the middle of the night, needing to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t remember what house I was in. After a few minutes, I sorted it out and made my way down the dark hallway to the bathroom.

   Why we moved so often…well…that is another story for another time. Today, I wish to discuss the school bus. I was 15, Bobbie 14, Ray 12.

   We lived out west of Booneville, about a mile off the highway on a little dirt road. Our bus driver was a kind man, if a little dim. He just DROVE the bus and didn’t pay a lot of attention to the kids on the bus. So there was the usual tomfoolery and shenanigans that goes along with teenagers and young children interacting with no adult really minding the goings on. The bus driver didn’t let it get out of control, and as long as we pretty much stayed in our seats and the language was clean, we had free rein.

   Bobbie and Ray and I were good kids, never really got in trouble over anything major. A minor demerit for talking, or missing an occasional homework assignment. My brother was once accused for stealing something from the gym. Another boy had identified my brother as the culprit and the coach and the principal kept him in the office for hours refusing to let him call my parents. He finally confessed, although still saying the whole time  he didn’t do it, that he was only telling them he did it to make them leave him alone.  One of my friends let me in on what was going on and I went to the office. There sat Ray, pale and shaken. The principal and coach were discussing Ray’s punishment. I had Ray step out and asked what was up. They told me how Ray had stolen something from the gym. I asked if they found it in his possession. “ummm….no.” said the coach. “then how do you know he stole it?” I asked. “Well, it’s well known you come from a “rough” family.” stated the coach. “so that makes us thieves?” I asked incredulously. “It don’t help.” said the coach. I opined that being poor didn’t make you a bad person. He declined to even acknowledge my statement. I stated that my dad was disabled and my mom was working like a dog to keep us fed and clothed. Silence. “we’re not thieves.” I insisted. “Ray isn’t a thief.”

   I stepped out and asked Ray what happened. He said he was leaving his first class and was sent to the office and had been there all morning, missing lunch. I said “what did they say you stole?” He tried to describe what it was, but wasn’t even sure. I said “did you take it?” he said “no, but I guess I finally told them I did, even though I didn’t.” He said how he had asked to call mom or dad or get me or Bobbie and they refused.

   I told Ray to go to lunch…there was a few minutes left for him to eat. I walked back into the principal’s office and asked them what their deal was and they basically told me the same thing, my family was “rough” and everybody knew it. I told them they had messed up by doing this and that I’d be notifying my “rough” daddy and my “rough” mama. The coach looked pleased but the principal looked pained.

   Within minutes of our conversation, the gym lockers were searched. A young blonde man about the same size as my brother was found with the stolen gym equipment in his locked locker. Immediately the principal called me in the office to try to smooth things over. I wasn’t listening to THAT and as soon as we got off the bus, we poured into the house and told mom and dad what happened and what was said to Ray and I.

   They drove immediately to the school….there were hats in hands and apologies. My brother…a wonderful athlete, so fast, so tough…dropped out of football immediately and as soon as he could drive, transferred to another school.

  (dear reader…that’s not the story I intended to tell. I guess it needed to be told, as often I don’t even know where these stories are going. they are a surprise to me, too at times)

     Back to school buses. On this particular day, we were about ten miles from our house, Bobbie and I sitting and visiting with the other kids…when Bobbie noticed a teenage boy of about 15 tormenting two adorable blonde little girls. They were sisters.  They lived just down the road from us, one was in kindergarten, the other in first grade. They were sweet and pretty and reminded Bobbie and I of us at that age.

  Bobbie elbowed me and we watched the boy for about a half a second. He was threatening the little girls, telling them he was going to hurt them.

   Bobbie made it to him first, all 6 feet of her lanky,  lean, broad shouldered blondeness. I was right behind her, in my 5’3” ninety eight pounds of fury. Bobbie got behind him and grabbed his hair, pulling his head backward over the seat. She leaned down in his face and hissed “I’LL KILL YOU IF YOU MESS WITH THOSE LITTLE GIRLS EVER AGAIN. WE WILL HUNT YOU DOWN”. I punched him quick in the throat and Bobbie banged his head against the bus window 3 times in quick succession. BAM BAM BAM. We backed away from him, leaving him stunned and wounded… our teeth bared, our fingers pointing at him. We hissed and spat like wildcats in his direction.  He grasped at his throat, tears in his eyes.

  We took the little girls hands and led them to our seats. We sat them in our laps and told them to stay by us every day on the bus, we’d take care of them. They both cried and laid their heads on our chests. We walked them to the door and watched them get off the bus at their stop. Bobbie and I turned to the teenage boy that had tormented them and threatened him again, just for good measure, announcing loudly to the bus that he torments little girls and we’d kill him if he did it again.  He wouldn’t even look at us, just stared out the window.

  Our stop was next and we got off the bus and headed in to get our chores done. Within a few minutes there was a knock on the door. I opened it and there stood the two little girls with their mother. They were all crying.

   The mother asked if what the little girls had told them was true, that Bobbie and I had beat up a young man on the bus for bothering her daughters. She asked this incredulously, as if the girls had made it up and she didn’t quite believe what she was hearing.  

  Bobbie and I told her, yes, that’s exactly what happened.

“you BEAT him up? like, you HIT him?” she said. “Actually, I grabbed his hair and Lichea punched his throat and I bashed his head against the window.” said Bobbie, very matter of factly. “we told him if he did it again, we’d kill him. We ain’t kidding.” I concurred with Bobbie. “yup. We’ll whup his hiney.”

   The mother just stood there, mouth agape. The little girls looked up at Bobbie and I and smiled and we leaned down and hugged them.

  The mom hugged us too and said “thank you. I worry every day when I put them on the bus, and now I won’t.”  

   The teenage boy quit riding that particular bus and I have no idea what happened to him. I bet he don’t hack off southern blonde gals, though.

     Bobbie and I laughed about this recently, about how we caught off guard and beat up a teenage boy bigger than us and scared him so bad.

    We think we had the courage to do that…. we had no fear..…because, as you may have heard…we were raised SO “rough”.

    And I’m so glad we were.

      Lord, as you are polishing me in this life, leave me some of my rough edges…the rough edges that will stand up to someone abusing someone else. Leave me the rough edges that make me take up for someone. Leave the rough edges, as they give other people something to hang on to, to grasp at. For isn’t it the rough things that make life smooth?

                                          Lord, leave me a little rough. J

I helpy my mom :)

It was summer 1975. I was 5, Bobbie was 4, Ray was 2. Daddy had a green 1948 GMC truck that had a pulpwood set up on it in the winter to cut down trees and haul them to the saw mill and a wooden flatbed to haul hay in the summer. He switched them out according to season. My favorite was when he had the flat bed on it, as I would direct my siblings and cousins in shows starring me and I would belt out my favorite hymns and country songs and the Acee milk commercial from the radio. Once, we drove it to town and mama was paying bills and Bobbie and I climbed up on the back of that old truck and started singing as loud as we could. A man came up and listened for a minute and gave Bobbie and I each a quarter and told us to keep singing.  We showed the quarters  to mama and got a stern talking to about climbing up on the “stage” as I called it and singing for strangers and for heaven’s sake, taking MONEY from them and we KNEW better and good heavens, you CHILDREN should KNOW better. So we kept our shows at home after that.  I knew all Loretta Lynn’s songs by heart and I loved “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man” and would belt it at the top of my lungs. I would sing and star in the show til they wandered off, hungry and bored and I would sadly follow them, my audience now gone, drawn away by baloney sandwiches and mushroom soup in a can. Bobbie and I loved mushroom soup, but we didn’t know what mushrooms actually were. They called the ones that grew wild in the woods by our house “toad stools” and warned us not to eat or even touch them or we would surely die. We would eat the mushroom soup heartily and save the “meats” in the bottom for last. We called them “meats” until one of my older cousins pointed out it was MUSHROOM soup, not “MEATS” soup and we stopped calling it that.

  Daddy and mama hauled hay all summer and with no one to babysit, would just take us kids along to what ever field the hay was at. Mama would take water and ice in an old glass pickle jar wrapped in a towel to keep it cold and peanut butter crackers. We would take an old blanket and books and a few toys and sit under a shade tree. A few times, though, we would get to a field and there would be no shade tree close and that meant we had to stay in the truck, a boring hot business for young children. One particular time, the hay was in a long field with few bumps or terraces…and no shade tree. So, mama put the old truck in granny gear (the lowest, most powerful gear in the truck, making the truck roll forward at a snail’s pace. You didn’t even need to be in the truck, it moving so slowly you could walk beside it) and put me up to the steering wheel. She instructed me to steer and cautioned me about letting Bobbie and Ray bump the gear shift. Bobbie and Ray sat on the other side, by the door. She cautioned me to not let them open the door from the inside of  the truck and let them fall out. “Bobbie. Don’t let your brother climb out the window.” She said and Bobbie nodded.  I took this in and set about my job. Mama started the truck. The gears made a little grumpy, grinding noise. Mama jiggled the gear shift gently and it eased up and she pushed in on the clutch again and it caught. The truck started to roll forward, slowly and mama got out. She shut the door and pointed to the end of the land, toward an old, creaky barn. “Drive that way. When we get close, I’ll hop in and turn it.” she instructed.

   I couldn’t see over the steering wheel by sitting, so I had put my feet up on the seat and was on my knees, that old steering wheel about as far as my little arms could stretch. I drove and steered, daddy throwing the bales up to mama, who stacked them firmly up onto the flat bed. Daddy wore no shirt and old blue jeans and glistened with sweat, his reddish blonde hair curling up around his ears. Mama wore jeans and a sleeveless shirt, she was brown but her hair was blonde and thick and hung in a ponytail down her back. She was thin and tall and striking, with a “don’t mess with ME” kind of vibe.

  Bobbie and Ray read books and bounced around in the front seat. I scolded them when they got too close to the gear shift and protectively put my tiny hand around it and drove that way, holding it in gear in case it got bumped. I would steer until we reached the end of the row, mama would jump in and turn it, that old truck with no power steering. The muscles and veins in her arms bulged and were covered in dirt and bits of hey. Sometimes, I will be driving the tractor..or mowing…or carrying dead chickens and I will look down and be surprise to see not MY arms by my MOTHER’S arms, all veins and dirt.

  So, I drove and scolded and protected the gear shift. But, then…distracted by Bobbie asking me a question, I ran over a hay bale. The truck bounced, mama almost fell and daddy ran up and caught the truck. He took it out of granny and backed it up and cautioned me to watch where I was going and don’t run over hay bales. I found out later this cost us 75 cents and I was crushed. So disappointed in myself.

   But I felt accomplished and strong after this experience and the next time we hauled hay, I was already prepared to drive again. We went to a field and…no shade tree. “YAY!” I thought silently.

   The people who owned the land had other ideas. The lady of the house, a sweet graying woman told my parents we could come in her house and stay while my parents worked. She had grandchildren that would visit and she had toys and ice cream. Bobbie and Ray were gleeful, but I was distraught.

  How could they haul hay without me? How would they get all that work done? I tried to tell the lady how much my mom needed me to drive. She looked at me as though I had just announced I was flying to Mars on my tricycle. “honey” she said gently, sweetly. “your mom and dad don’t need you. You’re just a little girl!”

   “poo.” I thought and quickly took it back. Mama hated “ugly words” and wouldn’t allow them . “poo” was an ugly word.

  She got out toys and Bobbie and Ray were playing and eating cookies she brought us. I halfheartedly looked at books and nibbled at a cookie, turning down the ice cream..my stomach churning. Finally I ran out the back door and all the way to the fence in the nice lady’s back yard. I could see the truck, slowly rolling. The hay on the back stacking higher. I yelled, thinking maybe they would hear me and needing my help, would come and get me. I surmised I could drive better with the nice lady watching Bobbie and Ray, how I could be MORE help without their distraction and wouldn’t run over any hay bales. Maybe that’s why they were treating me like a child, I had run over a hay baul, ruining my shining moment.

   And that’s where I stayed the rest of the afternoon, out by the back fence, watching the truck go back and forth. The nice lady finally forced me to come inside out of the sun and eat a little something. I dozed off on the floor as Bobbie and Ray played quietly beside me on the rug. When mom and dad came to get us, I was fuzzy from sleep, but told the nice lady “thank you” when prompted. She told my parents of me insisting they needed me out there and everybody laughed. The laughter at first confused me, I thought they were making fun but when the nice lady patted my head and said “that one is a hard worker and wants to help her mom and dad” I realized they were bragging on me.

  Trevor was 2 and I was hugely pregnant with Tara. It was 1992. We were remodeling the house and repainting…ripping out flooring. It was hard work and one day, while doing dishes in the bathtub, 8 months pregnant, I thought “this was a BAD idea” but it was too late to stop and we just kept plugging along.

  It was my job to paint. It was hard painting with a 2 year old and so I had a plan. I put an old cardboard box in the living room, gave Trevor a coffee can full of pain and an old paint brush. He was insistent on helping and if I waited for him to nap, I would never get it done. So, I painted the walls and he painted his box, asking me from time to time how it looked. He would proudly show Clint his hard work when he came home and said “I helpy! I helpy my mom!”. When I would start getting out the stuff to paint, he would put on his toy tool belt with plastic hammer and screwdriver and  grab his paint brush and get to work. He would try to carry paint cans from room to room or help me drag the ladder. “I helpy! I helpy my mom!”

  One day we were painting in the master bedroom and the phone rang. This was before cordless phones. I couldn’t see Trevor from where I was, but I could hear him. I chatted for a few minutes with my aunt Muff, filling her in on my pregnancy and she filled me in on hers. I could hear Trevor in the bedroom playing and saying “I helpy! I helpy!” and after five or ten minutes, I told Muff I better go…Trevor was starting to get quiet. She laughed and said she understood and we started to hang up.

   That’s when Trevor entered the room, dragging a large, white, stiff sheet of …something. I said “hang on a second, Muff..” and put the phone down and walked closer to investigate. It was the newly painted cover of the sheet rock. I realized then that at one time it had been wallpaper, but had been painted over years before. I had painted over THAT and the wet paint had cause the wall paper to soften and pull away from the trim. Trevor had gotten his hammer and screwdriver…plastic, but deadly….to hammer and chisel along the trim and pull the whole sheet off. He had watched Clint do this to pull the trim off and Clint had let him “helpy” so that’s what Trevor decided needed done. He was so proud of himself, pulling this 5 foot sheet of hard work off the wall, leaving bare, chalky uncovered sheet rock. I didn’t even get on to him…we just stopped for the day and ate lunch and Trevor fell asleep watching a cartoon. When Clint came home, I said “Trevor, why don’t you go show your dad all your hard work you did today.” Trevor’s face lit up and he grabbed Clint’s hand and dragged him to the bedroom. He proudly showed Clint the sheet rock he had dismantled and crowed “I HELPY!! I HELPY MY MOM!”

  Clint hugged him and said “yeah…wow…you really did something in here!” Trevor smiled and showed him how he did it, putting the plastic screwdriver up underneath the cover and tapping it with the hammer, peeling it away from the wall and pulling it down with one fell swoop.

  Trevor says he remembers all of this and how thinking he had to help me, his mama and her big belly with the baby inside. He said he felt like I couldn’t do it without him and he had to be his daddy when he was at work. He said he remembered the box he painted, and how he would think to himself  “I’ve got to get his done before dad gets home!”

    I guess that one was a hard worker that just wants to help his mom and dad. Or..”helpy”, as it were.

Dog Days

  I have loved many dogs. The earliest dog I can remember is Seymore, a border collie that was my constant companion. I fashioned a leash out of some old hay string and taught him to chase the cows out of the garden. He would heel and sit and stay when I yelled for him to do so. I was 4. We gave him to Granny to keep when we moved to Oklahoma. The last time I saw him, I was 10 and he was at Granny’s house. He was wobbly and acted dizzy and Granny told me he was sick and probably had an ear infection. I patted his graying head and ran off to play with my cousins, not realizing it would be my last chance to do so. I don’t know exactly when he died, he was just gone the next time we came to Arkansas. The guilt of this haunts me, of him trying to follow me to Granny’s lake, wobbly and sick and me just running ahead uncaring. Dear heavens, tears fall to my lap as I’m typing this. Who else loves you like a dog?

  Smokey was a huge, beautiful German Shepherd that showed up in Coalgate, Oklahoma.  He was obsessed with Bobbie’s Raggedy Ann doll. He was afraid of storms and would hide in the closet. I wrote Granny a letter, telling her that “Smokey goes THUMP THUMP when he is in the house” and asked about Seymore. Bobbie and Ray wrote similar letters, their childish scrawl proclaiming love for this black and white dog.  

  Sassy showed up about a month after Smokey, a German Shepherd mix puppy. Smokey bit her in the side of the head when she chewed on his injured ear, a remnant of a fight with 2 Pit Bulls. Mom was hugely pregnant with Boo at the time and couldn’t get them apart. Finally, the Pit Bulls gave up and mom drug the injured Smokey home. When Smokey bit Sassy, she seizured and fell unconscious. Mom being so pregnant and Daddy gone working on the oil rigs left me to place Sassy in my bed with me, where she alternated between seizures and sleep. She would cry and whine at times in pain. By morning she seemed ok and kept some food down. I was exhausted and worried about her at school all day.

  We brought Smokey and Sassy home with us to Arkansas. Smokey lasted a few weeks, then tried to bite a neighbor boy that chased Bobbie and I and made us scream. Sassy survived eating fly poison and seizures…getting hit by a truck…we gave her away and I don’t know what happened to her. Another tear just hit my lap.

  Daddy brought Bear home from the humane society when he started working nights. Bear was….huge. Ridiculously huge. He was some sort of Great Dane/Pit Bull/Lab mix. He was solid black until we bathed him, where we found he was actually black with white brindle stripes..probably a nod to the Pit Bull in his lineage. He was sweet and gentle but his mere presence send people fleeing back to their cars. He also hated men with hats for some reason and once when Boo was crying and my cowboy hat wearing Papaw tried to reach for her, Bear lunged at him and snapped at his face, sending Papaw backward. I started to get on to Bear, but Papaw said for me not to, as he felt certain that dog was just doing his job. Bear loved to ride in trucks and often if someone left their door open, he would hop in. That’s what we think happened, the day we came home and he was gone. That’s what we hope, anyway.

   A few years ago, I looked in the front yard and thought OH CRUD!! the kids miniature horse is out!! But upon closer inspection saw a bony, thin, HUGE female replica of Bear. I called her to me and it was obvious she had just had pups. I fed her Granny’s mixture of eggs, bread, and milk and petted her. She stayed for years. We named her Ladybug, a ridiculous name for such a huge dog.  She was sweet and kind and gentle…but her mere presence put people back in their trucks and once I caught her with her nose close to a crack at the chicken house door. We had gotten baby chicks that day and she was waiting for the baby chick to poke it’s head out of the crack, whereupon Ladybug was vacuuming chicks into her mouth and swallowing them whole. She was still young enough to want to play and one evening in the cool of the fall, she and I were running and dodging each other around in the front yard. I had on elastic waisted lounge pants with pockets. She ran up to me and raised up on her hind legs. She stood eye level with six foot tall men when she did that. I dodged to keep her from hitting me in the face with her giant paw…that’s when she, on the way down, caught the pocket of my lounge pants, pulling them and me to the ground. We lay there struggling in the evening sun, her paw still caught in my pocket. Cars were whizzing by, people heading home from their jobs. We got untangled and I got my pants back up while laying on the ground. Ladybug was still trying to play and stomped me a few times and then lay down on top of me. I giggled and petted her, thinking that since I was 38 at the time, I probably should stop with running around with the dogs.

   The list goes on, the strays and the rescued, some given to Clint and I and the kids… Champ. Jake. Rocky. Brownie. Doofus. Dancy. Stinkpot.   Some had to be put down, some disappeared as quietly as they had shown up, here one day, gone the next. We named them after they had been with us a while, showing their personality. Hence “Doofus”, the dumbest, sweetest dog ever. Worst guard dog on record. Wouldn’t bite a biscuit, we like to say.

  We seem to have an affinity for sickly, lame, abused dogs. They find their way here and I can’t stand to see them hungry. I fix them my Granny’s recipe for sick dogs: tear up several pieces of white bread. Break 3-4 eggs over this. Sodden it with milk to the edge of the bowl. Set this down in front of the sick dog. If he won’t eat this, he’s as good as dead. If he eats it, he has a good chance of survival. You offer this to the dog until he’s eating dog food and tolerating it. I have proven this over and over. Dogs that have been fed this and fattened back up will LOVE you forever. They also send psychic rays to OTHER stray sick dogs and this is why we have so many names on my list. And often, it gives them the strength to head on down the road to the next sucker to con into taking them in.   

   I thought about Seymore yesterday while walking chickens. Maggie goes down there with me, she’s 10 years old now. Half Pit Bull, half…something else. Tara picked her out at the Humane Society when she was a puppy. It was love at first sight. She is smart and energetic and a good guard dog, to boot. She’s put many a man back in their truck as they yell at me “does that dog bite?” Depending on whether I like the man or not, I answer “yes” or “no”. She is small and quick and a lethal fighter. She is also the sweetest, most loving dog I know. I’ve watched her recently, this Maggie of ours…she doesn’t just jump over the gate like she used to, she waits for me to open it. She judges the best way to jump up onto the flat bed of the ton truck, preparing and checking to see which way is the lowest for her to jump. She wants to sleep inside now when it’s cold, and gets up more slowly. Her muzzle is graying. Clint says she acts more elderly and decrepit for me and he’s right. She will limp and act like she can’t stand the cold. I will let her in and cover her with a blanket. Then, Clint comes home and starts up the Kubota and she’s up like a SHOT and JUMPS over the gate and happily flies around with him checking cows in the snow.

  Maggie came inside the chicken houses with me and slowly walked the length of them. Back and forth. Right behind me. I stopped occasionally and petted her. She doesn’t bother the chickens, they scatter as she trots thru them. She usually doesn’t come inside the houses, she mostly waits outside and barks when people pull up. So I pondered Maggie following me and thought about Seymore and my missed opportunity to love on him.

     So I sat, right on the ground in the chicken houses and called Maggie to me. She climbed up in my lap, all fat 40 pounds of her, fat with dog food and chickens… and tried to kiss my face. I’m sure my tears were salty to her and we leaned to each other, touching foreheads.  I whispered endearing things to her and petted her down her back.  Tears fell on her and she sighed like she was sad, too. I thought about my grown kids and how Maggie had loved them. How Tara picked her out and Trevor would let her lay on his bed. How they would play with her, down at the creek and sic her on possums and squirrels.  Does she miss them, too?  Does she notice I think twice before I jump up on the back of the flat bed? That I don’t step up onto the deck like I used to, that now I brace myself carefully? Does she see my measured steps off the tractor, careful in my steps?  Does she see I am slower now, sometimes in pain from cold weather? Does she see me light up and feel younger when I see the man I love and hop on the Kubota with him and check the cows?

    I think about this and I think about Seymore…and me, in the summer sun,  four years old, a hay rope in my hand, running along barefoot to the creek, chasing cows.

                                                                Stay, Seymore. Stay.

Back me up :)

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Several of my stories will probably start this way, but here’s one I have to tell. Mostly because my daughter Tara was with me at the time.

  It was hot that summer and the chickens were big. The tractor was broken down, so that meant no front end loader to throw the 100 plus 6 pound dead chickens into, making one trip per house to the composter and dumping the freshly dead onto the disgusting, gooey, vulture and raccoon and possum chewed up dead. Tis a miserable, disgusting job to climb up onto the back of the one ton flatbed and grasp each chicken AGAIN by the leg and toss them one or two at a time into the composter. Miserable, hot, disgusting and stinky. The composter is just large, open bins to pile dead birds in and let them “compost” which is a nice way to say “let them rot and get all boiling with maggots and flies and draw every raccoon, coyote and possum and stray cat and hawk for miles”.

  Trevor was in college at the time and Tara was about 16, helping me walk chickens when they were big and hard to do. I saved her for days when it was bad and left her alone when it wasn’t that hard.

  We got the bright idea (actually…she says I thought it up by myself and she’s probably right) to load all the birds as far back as we could and I would put the one ton in reverse and just FLOOR it and fly backward, slamming on my brakes and THROWING the chickens into the composter at one time, saving the tedium and work in the heat.  

   So, Tara and I put all the birds on the very end of the flatbed and I got in the truck and put it into position. Clint had put a big, heavy, red tool box on the truck which blocked my view from the back window. The tool box was filled with heavy metal tools and equipment from the chicken houses. It weighed probably around 300 pounds.

  I FLOORED it and watched the composter looming up quickly in my side mirror. I SLAMMED on the brakes in what I felt was an appropriate length away from the composter. Tara and I skidded backward HARD and….

                        (I feel I must interject here. If I had known the 300 pound tool box was attached to the truck with a couple of bungee cords, I probably would not have done this. Carry on)

   the chickens didn’t move, not ONE of them flew off the end. What DID try to fly backward was the 300 pound tool box, stretching  the bungee cords to their LIMIT. Tara and I watched in horror as the tool box came back at us and hit the back of the window with a BOOM.

  We sat in silence for a second.

    “Bad idea, mom.” said Tara.

“not one of my better ones, Tara.” said I.

We inspected everything and found no damage to the truck or toolbox. Then, we climbed up onto the back of the flatbed and in silence, spend the next 20 minutes grabbing dead  chickens by the feet and throwing them as hard as we could into the maggoty pile of goo.

   “you gonna tell dad?” asked Tara. “yup” I said.

And I did.

When he quit being mad, he laughed at me and fixed the tractor and then, for my birthday…bought me my very own Kubota, with a dump bed. So there is no need to try to be creative and make work easier, as I tool around in my Kubota, using the dump bed to dump all those freshly dead on top of the deadly dead. But sometimes, because my Kubota is small, I have to back WAY up on TOP of the deadly dead to dump the freshly dead, hearing the bones crunch and hear the soggy bog of death push away underneath me.  Then I have to get out and wade thru….I’m not even gonna SAY what I wade thru…to unlatch the part to dump the bed of dead.  What if….I piled all the birds WAY on the back…put it in reverse….and backed up REALLY fast…hmmmm. Seems like it could work…..

  

Want a cookie?

There’s a trick to making chocolate chip cookies. They are delightful.  I make them in a pan, like brownies. They are soft and thick and gooey. It is my most requested dessert and I make them at least once a week. I can quadruple the recipe in my head and pull out my ginormous stainless steel bowl (big enough to bathe a baby in, my mom would say) and use 8 cups of flour, 4 cups of shortening, 3 cups each of white and brown sugar, 4 tsp vanilla, 8 eggs, 2 bags of good quality chocolate chips. I will bake a couple of batches and freeze a couple to send as gifts or when Clint wants dessert and I’m in a hurry.

   I know I’m not supposed to eat the raw cookie dough, but do anyway. There is a sweet science, the creaming of shortening and sugar…watching it get lighter in color and fluff around the beaters. I think of times past when I first made these cookies, Bobbie and I in so many kitchens of so many rent houses. Mom at work, her job as a surgical nurse keeping a roof over our heads.  Bobbie and I in the kitchen, singing old hymns…me belting out the lead, Bobbie with her low alto. Once, we accidentally doubled the sugar and made a dark brown, shiny, chocolate chip brittle. It was disgusting and wonderful.

     We bought the ingredients for our cookies with food stamps..the old ones that looked like Monopoly money. They came in a booklet and we would carefully tear them out. Mom had a hard and fast rule. We could NOT buy junk food of ANY kind with food stamps. We  could BUY the stuff to MAKE junk food. She would say “that’s not free! that’s somebody’s money! I wouldn’t let you buy garbage with real money, I’m not doing it with food stamps!” even if she wasn’t with us, we never broke this rule. I once was at the store with a friend of  mine who was going to use food stamps to buy a small carton of Haagen Dazs ice cream. I, at the ripe old age of 16, shamed him until he picked out a larger, less expensive brand. Do people do that today? I wonder. Do they care it’s someone’s money?

   I mix the dough and think of this. Me, a miniature, big haired, 16 year old conservative, firmly believing in fiscal responsibility. Me, with no money, just a book of play money. Someone else’s money, feeding me.  I inhale  the smell of vanilla. I think heaven will smell of vanilla.  I crack eggs one handed into my big bowl, making the dough  more substantial, adding a yellow richness.  Slowly adding the flour, making a fine dusting on the counter when I  start the mixer. I think of a time I made chocolate chip cookies when my world had just changed. For the worse? For the better? I am not sure, even now in my age and I mix the dough, the mixer lagging a bit at the thickness. I talk to Bobbie at times about this day, when we were baking and living in a house our parents built and then just a short time later, we were living with relatives and couldn’t bake cookies in their kitchens, using their ingredients, getting flour on the floor.  

   I press the cookies in the pan with bare, clean hands, pinching off the dough and tasting it. “Is this the time I’m going to get sick?” I think. But I never do. I ponder that I didn’t want my kids to eat the raw dough, when I made these cookies for them…but they did anyway. Clint did too and once fixed the kids their own bowls of raw dough, with me picturing DHS workers taking away our children for this. They ate it with a spoon and no one got sick.

   I push them in the oven, at 350 degrees instead of the 375 to cook them slower. I watch them closely, to just brown the edges, and not let the middle get brown at all. By the time you smell them cooking, it’s too late and they are overcooked. The middle should indent slightly when you push your finger into it gently. It shouldn’t be raw looking or gooey, it should just indent and your finger should come away clean. The air from the oven is hot and sweet, the smell of brown sugar and fat. Don’t open the door too often. Use the light and watch them become a token of perfectly baked love.

    Here is the most important part. When you see the edges are brown, put a couple of pot holders or a clean, dry dish towel down on the counter.

  Take the cookies out and carefully hold them up about a foot and a half above the pot holders.             

        Drop them with a solid thud,making sure you get a solid WHOMP sound. I have taught my daughter this, and now my daughter in law…I hear them say “oh, to get cookies like that, you gotta whack them on the counter, just give them a big ol’ WHOMP!” when they tell their friends how to make these delightful cookies.   

     You may even have to give them a little oomph on their downward descent. Make sure the whole pan settles, it’s ok to drop them more than once. WHOMP! just like that. Those cookies will never see it coming. I WHOMP the cookies with satisfaction  and watch them fall in on themselves.

   This will compact them and change their texture, making them chewy and soft, dense and lovely.  

    Think about that the next time life WHOMPS you, pulling you from a warm place before you think you are ready, just as you thought you were almost done… suddenly dropping you from great heights, plummeting you against hardness, settling your basic ingredients to your very core and center.

    It is simply God, making sure you are delightful.

 I don’t know if it was Clint or I that saw her first…we were driving in separate vehicles home from Tara and Trevor’s soccer games. Why we were in separate vehicles is something else I don’t know, but we were talking to each other on our cell phones. Clint and Trevor were in his truck in front of Tara and I. I’m sure our cell phone conversation was one of two things. 1) hey, Lichea, I’ll check chickens cause I’ve got to go check the cows anyway OR 2)  hey, Lichea, you need to check chickens cause I’ve got to check the cows. We have this conversation a lot on the weekends.

  She was striding in a purposeful way, this attractive blonde woman about my age along the highway toward our house. Her head was high, her chin was up. It was warm that Saturday in October and her hair was damp with sweat.

  At the same time, Clint and I exclaimed to each other that I needed to check on her, possibly pick her up and get her where she needed to go. I mentioned better me than some man with bad intentions.

  I slowed and pulled up beside her and rolled down the window. “Honey, do you need help?” I asked. “Can I take you somewhere?” She yanked the door open and jumped in the back seat after looking Tara and I over. Tara was about 9 and sat silently in the front seat.

  The lady was crying in great gasps and hitches. She stammered out a story of her abusive husband leaving with the only vehicle and no money and no phone. He had just moved her down to this area and she knew no one. She had left her 11 year old and 8 year old sons at home because she knew where she had to walk…and it was so far. She feared the boys couldn’t make the 10 mile trek to the abusive husband’s parent’s home down the long dirt road. Her face was bruised and her lip was healing from where he had hit her when he had left the 3 days earlier. I watched her in the rear view mirror as I drove, glancing from her to the road…her tears, her bruises, how she was shaking and scared. Tara fished a napkin out of the center console, from a ridiculously cheerful fast food place and handed it to her. She sobbed into it as I drove and told me the name of her inlaws.

   I knew exactly where she needed to go and called Clint and told him where I was taking her and that I’d fill him in on the details later. So we drove toward her inlaw’s house. I asked her what her plan was and it was basically to load up the 2 boys (they were from a previous relationship) and go back to northwest Arkansas where her family was from. She had met her husband at church up there, where he told her of his past drug issues and assured her he was now clean. She fell in love with him, married.. and the first year was fine. Then…he picked up the drugs again one day out of the blue and became an abusive, violent monster.  What’s sad is… I knew her husband…and had thought him a good boy and remember being stunned when I found out he was on drugs right after high school. He got into some trouble, but I had heard he was straightening his life out.

  This story spilled out of her and I let her talk, seeing Tara out of the corner of my eye look toward me in shock. She had never heard anything like this in her life. The hitchhiker told of shame and humiliation in facing her family, who had warned her of his issues. He had moved her down here to get away from her family, like abusive men do….take away the support system for her.

  At some point she said “do you pick up hitchhikers a lot? it’s not safe, you know.” I told her how Clint and I both saw her and both felt God wanted me to pick her up, that there was no danger. I also told her that I worried more about her on that highway than myself, this beautiful, vulnerable woman with no phone and no weapon, that I couldn’t have rested until I knew she was safe.  

  I drove the hitchhiker down the long dirt road. She exclaimed three or four times she hadn’t realized how far down this road they lived. What was she thinking, she said.. leaving her boys at home and trying to walk all this way?

  Before she got out of the car, I turned around and we grasped hands. We were all crying, Tara included. I said “Honey, do you need money?” She smiled. “No, I just need to get home.” I looked her in her eyes. I said “My husband’s name is Clinton Bottoms. It’s in the phone book. Clinton Bottoms. You call me. I will come to you where ever you are and help you. Say it back.” “Clinton Bottoms” she said. “thank you. Tell your husband thank you.” She patted Tara’s arm from the back seat.

  She got out and I waited until someone came to the door. I watched her embrace her husband’s mother. I knew she would be fine and so, backed slowly out.

  Tara and I drove in silence for a moment and then Tara asked a few questions and we talked about abusive, controlling men. How they charm and smile and weasel. How they remove the woman from her family, her friends, her job, making her solely dependent on him. I warned her what drugs or alcohol will do to a person, make them violent and angry and full of hate.  

  When I got home, I told Clint what had happened and over then next few days I’d just blurt out to him “I pray she’s ok.” “Honey, you’ve got to quit worrying about her.” he would say. “you did all you could.”

    Several months later, I was having a very bad day. See…and I don’t know how to say this…but I have people in my life that I have to deal with that…well…apparently…HATE me. I mean HATE me. They tell people that don’t know me that I’m a flirt, that I’m a bad mother…that I’m not a good wife. Even though there is no evidence to any of this, and none of it is based in any reality at all… these few people seem to enjoy causing pain and hurt to other people. I had been dealing with this on a level that had become unbearable. Every day seemed to be another person telling me that these people were saying ugly things about me…even at my church, which should have been my sanctuary. I had cried most of that day and felt at a loss at what to do.

  I went to the post office that cold, wet day and got the mail. I carried it back to the Expedition and went through it.

  A letter addressed to “Clinton Bottoms Family” caught my eye. It was marked all over the front of it, obviously sent to the wrong place and returned to sender…then another address written underneath that. I didn’t recognize the name written in the upper left hand corner.

  I opened it and found a beautiful thank you card. On the inside was written this:

                                 thank you for picking me up and taking me to safety.

                                  I was praying to God He would send me a good Christian

                                  woman to drive me to where I needed to go. I am fine and

                                  so are the boys. Thank you for listening to God.

I read it over and over. I called Clint and said “I just got a thank you note from the hitchhiker!” he knew exactly who I was talking about. My heart sang with the words she wrote. I realized I had been basing my opinion of myself on the very few, very bitter, very angry, very un-Christlike  people who seemed to not get along with anybody INSTEAD  of basing my opinion of myself on God and the people who love me implicitly. How sad! I had allowed these people to separate me from my support system, to make me feel alone with no one to reach out to. They had abused me with words and lies and just when I thought I couldn’t bear it anymore, her card pulled me from the depths.

  I went home and wrote a letter and sent it to the address on the card. I told her I had thought and prayed every day for her and that I would love to see her again.

      I never heard back, but something tells me she’s ok.

What I want to say to her is….maybe I stopped and drove her to safety…maybe Clint and I listened to God and reached out to her…but, really and truly…that day, a blonde was striding away from pain and anger…trusting no one…so much doubt and abuse and fear…and it was SHE  who picked ME up.

Skinnin' Squirrels in a Rowboat

When Clint and I first married, we lived in a little run down house just a mile or so from where we live now. It was right on the highway. It’s strange to drive past it now, so many memories. One of my good friends lives there and often I’ll pop by for one reason or another and stand in the kitchen that still has my clock radio under the cabinet and walls still painted the peach I picked out so long ago. Trevor was 2 when I painted most of the house and I was hugely pregnant with Tara. Trevor wanted to paint with me, so I got an old cardboard box, dragged it to the center of the room, and poured him a coffee can full of paint and handed him a paintbrush and he would set about painting the box, working diligently. He did such a good job, I really should have let him paint the WALL instead of the box. Trevor says he remembers thinking to himself  “I’ve got to get this box painted before daddy comes home!”

  But before all that…the first year, there was no money for paint or new flooring. The house was livable, but when I look back at old pictures, I’m stunned at the condition. I was so poor growing up, I guess living in an old house with cabinets that the doors wouldn’t even close or linoleum with holes in it was ok. As long as I could clean it, I didn’t mind. Clint also had some nephews…Raymond, Kelly…Raymond was 6 months younger than me and Kelly was 3 years younger. I was 18 at the time, but functioned as Raymond’s mom. He moved in with us a week after we got married and finished his senior year of school. Kelly stayed with us about half the time, shuttling from his mom and dad’s to our house to get to basketball practice or games or just to hang out with Raymond and play basketball. I became “mom” or something like it, a role I was born to play. Just ask my younger brother and sisters.

  I worked as a nurse’s aide in the little hospital in Booneville. Clint and I had married that September of  ’88 and I usually got home about 3:45. I pulled up this particular day to see Kelly, all 6 feet of him, dressed in Clint’s overalls. Clint is 5’6”. Kelly was tall and lanky, with dark hair and blue eyes,  and the overalls hit him about mid shin.  His bare feet stuck out and he was shirtless. He was sitting in an old rowboat in the front yard, skinning a pile of squirrels he had shot that day. There had to be 20 or so and he had just gotten started. His gun was still propped on the side of the rowboat.  I hollered “need some help?” and he thought that a grand idea, so I ran in and put a pair of overalls on. I didn’t have any old shoes, so I stayed barefoot, too. At the time, I weighed 100 pounds soaking wet and was so pale, you could practically see thru me. I was my own x-ray, I liked to joke.

  So Kelly sat on one end of the rowboat on that fine fall day, the sun dropping lower, a chill starting in the air. He got a big dip of skoal, which I frowned at. He smiled a big smile across the boat and with the skoal in his teeth said “Aunt Lichea, don’t say NOTHIN’” I said NOTHIN’ and he picked up a squirrel and cut around the base of its tail. I grabbed the tail and he grabbed the squirrel and with one swift, sure move, we pulled the skin off. I carefully put the naked rodent that I wouldn’t eat if you PAID me into a bowl. Then we grabbed the next one and did it again.

  At this point, Kelly and I were covered in a fine spray of blood and fur. Our fingers were dark with blood.  We were about half way done, when we saw a car slow down and turn into the driveway. I didn’t recognize the car, but realized when the suited man stepped out…he was selling something. I had a skinned squirrel in my hand, and Kelly was just cutting around the tail of another one. We stared at the man and he stared at us, sitting in the rowboat in the yard, two teenagers covered in carnage and gore.

  He announced he was selling vacuum cleaners and offered to demonstrate one in my living room, smoothly telling me that I would get 3 nights free in Branson if I would allow him to do this and recommend 5 friends he could visit. I looked down at my bare feet, dirty and covered in squirrel bits and blood. I looked across at Kelly, shirtless and shoeless. I started to tell the man that this wasn’t a good time, but thank you! I was still holding the naked squirrel by the tail as I started to form the words.

  That’s when Kelly stood up in the rowboat, showing his bare shins and feet. The overalls were so small on him, he only had one side fastened, the other still hanging down his back. He spit a HUGE stream of tobacco toward the man, who stood staring at us, mouth agape. Kelly held the bloody, dead body of a squirrel he had shot in the head toward the man and said in the most southern accent imaginable “Y’ALL WANT SOME SQUIRREL??”

  Mr. Vacuum Cleaner Salesman quietly, wordlessly turned and put the vacuum back into the back seat. He gave us one last look as he got into his car. I sat, naked squirrel in hand, as he SCREECHED out of the driveway.

  Kelly sat down and handed me my part of the squirrel to pull. After we pulled a couple more skins off, Kelly looked at me and grinned, tobacco all in his teeth, squirrel blood flecked on his face.

  “Guess he didn’t want no squirrel.” he stated.

  Clint came home a few minutes later, completely nonplussed by the fact we were sitting in a rowboat in the front yard skinning squirrels. He thanked me for helping Kelly and we carried the squirrel inside, where Clint and Kelly cooked a few of them, asking me to make gravy to go with it. I took my shower first and by then it was time for me to make the gravy. Kelly told Clint the story of the vacuum salesman and we laughed at what must have gone through his mind. I know to this day, that this salesman probably tells this story of being in Arkansas and finding two teenagers skinning squirrels in a rowboat. Kelly grinned at me across the table, held a forkful of squirrel at me as I sat eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  “Y’all want some squirrel?” he said.  

Golden Memories of Mom

 I ran a few errands in town recently, and thought I’d stop by mom and dad’s house to visit for a minute. I got there and  mom got a sheet out to put over the chair for me to sit on…they have NUMEROUS cats…loving, slobbering, fur dispensing  cats…cats who, despite your obvious dislike of their fur, are intent on covering you with exactly the same amount of cat hair that they currently wear. So, we’re talking about the usual…their cats, their health, my siblings, work, Clint, Trevor, and Tara, the chickens….that’s when my mother suddenly blurted out “Lichea..when I die…I want you to have the mortician pull out my back teeth. Or, I suppose you could do it… You’ve got pliers…anyhoo…they are gold  and I want you to have it melted down and make yourself a nice ring or necklace.” While I’m processing this, trying to remain stonefaced, she goes on “I won’t need them and there’s no sense letting all that gold go to waste.” My dad is horrified by this conversation and looks at me and says. “Lichea! Don’t do that to your mother! That’s terrible. Pulling your mother’s teeth to make a necklace.” That’s when my mom pipes up and says “

Bobby Lane

! They’re MY teeth and I’ll have them pulled and melted down if I want to. Lichea, you do that for me.

Bobby Lane

! It’s GOLD. Do you HEAR ME?? GOLD. Gold is worth a LOT of money right now. ” I’m saying nothing, dumbfounded by the turn of events. Dad says “I can’t believe you’d do that, Lichea. That’s awful. That’s sick. That’s creepy. ” Meanwhile, mom is silently mouthing to me “don’t listen to him. Do what I say. He won’t know the difference. He won’t even remember this conversation. Pull my gold teeth.” Dad is still muttering at me and mom, telling us how morbid we are. Where he gets this “we” business, I have no idea. I’m tempted to use my favorite joke when I’m in the middle of two people fighting through me “15 love. Your serve.”    Meanwhile, I’m tempted to ask mom if she wants me to leave her teeth IN the gold…I pictured someone coming up and being like “Wow! That’s interesting…is that an opal?” I’d pause for a minute and say “no…it’s a pearl…..y white! Molar! It was my mom’s! She left it to me. She tried to give me her gallstones to make a bracelet , but I felt that was in bad taste…” I didn’t say that, although it was tempting..…what I did do was look her solemnly in the eye and say “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Get it? BRIDGE?” She did get it, and we guffawed and daddy finally trailed off and we got back onto the subject of my chickens, church and the idiot man down the road that hangs around Wal-mart and tries to pick up women, myself included. We laughed at his cheesy pick up lines and what I said to him the last time he approached me. I don’t remember what it was EXACTLY  that I said, but I know there was an overtly implied threat of physical harm involving the bottle of shampoo I had in my hand at the time. I was joking that after I hit him with the shampoo, I’d follow up with the conditioner because you should ALWAYS condition right after you shampoo.  Daddy brought up about my accident in the chicken houses earlier that week…a door must have gotten knocked off its hinges and I pulled it with all my might and BAM!! right in the side of the head, knocking myself unconscious. I awoke lying on the ground, gagging and heaving, so CAT scans and Dr. visits..I  was pronounced concussed and sent home to rest for a few days…Daddy said “Lichea…you really need to carry a gun out there to protect yourself.” I said “Daddy..I don’t know how much good a gun is going to do against a door.” He looked at me solemnly and said, “Well, next time it might be a man that knocks you in the head.” I tried to picture me yanking a man off his hinges so he could hit me on the head. I found his logic hard to argue with and told him I’d look into purchasing a handgun to wear on my hip. He found that to be a grand idea… After that, I got up to go and said goodbye with the thought of my toothless, goldless mother.She reminded me again before she left to be SURE and pull her teeth and if it bothered me, have the mortician do it for HEAVEN’S sake, it’s GOLD and therefore WORTH SOMETHING and what a WASTE it would be to bury her with GOLD in her head. That’s how she said “Goodbye!” that evening.   Then when I got home, I told Clint what my mom said to me about her gold teeth and we laughed and laughed…then, that night when I laid down to go to sleep, I thought about her wish…I would NEVER do that, take the gold from her mouth to make jewelry..NEVER…the thought of it so wrong on so many levels…but what I did think about was that she wanted me to have something valuable…something beautiful, sparkling and golden…something just for me…and she did give me something. An unexpected funny story to tell my family and friends about my brash, irreverent mother, the stories she leaves me worth their weight in gold.

This is about my sister Bobbie, who as most of you know almost died last spring. Warning...it's not graphic to me, but I do describe surgical stuff. Not that any of my friends are wimps :)

  My sister Bobbie almost died last spring.

     She is 17 months younger than me. Mom raised us practically as twins, dressing us alike, cutting our blonde hair into the same styles. Although younger than me, Bobbie is taller  (she is almost 6 feet tall, I’m 5’3”) so mom could dress us in the same size from the time Bobbie was 2. Most of our childhood pictures show us side by side…she the same height as me…her hair just a tad darker than mine. It wasn’t hard to have hair darker than mine..Ray (my younger brother by 3 years) and Boo (it’s actually Amanda, younger than me by 9) had this hair that wasn’t blonde..it was a silvery white. Ray’s eventually darkened a tad… then disappeared altogether with the genetic curse that is the Preston male. Boo’s hair is still just as white as ever. I doubt she colors it, as I do mine.

  But back to Bobbie. This wasn’t the first time she scared us like this…it’s closer to the third. This time was different, though and it’s a story I feel I need to tell. The first time she scared us, she had a horrid miscarriage that required surgery and left her bloodless and pale. The second time was after her tubal ligation, she developed a tubal pregnancy…a rare, but deadly pregnancy not in the uterus, but in the fallopian tube. When the pregnancy reaches a certain size, it literally explodes the tube…causing massive internal bleeding. So…I’ve gone to the bedside of my sister before, seeing her pale and wan and hovering over her, talking of blood types and surgery.

  This time was different.

Bobbie had a routine hysterectomy scheduled that day in April. I had fairly large chickens and was planning my daughter’s wedding. Mom (also a nurse, as is Bobbie) had to work. Boo volunteered to stay with Bobbie that day. Bobbie and her husband Jack were separated at the time and actually…Bobbie had filed for divorce. The marriage seemed to be broken down to the point of no repair.   After 4 children and 5 miscarriages, that uterus HAD TO GO as Bobbie and I would say to each other. So off goes Boo to the hospital with Bobbie for her routine surgery.

  After I got the chickens walked and ate lunch, I worked a little on wedding stuff. At about 2, I started feeling….restless. Ill at ease. Like I was supposed to be somewhere. I put my makeup on, the whole time wondering WHY. I don’t usually put makeup on if I’m not going somewhere. I called my friend Carolyn and she stated she was heading to town to pay a few bills. “I want to go” I blurted. “I’ll drive”. So I picked her up and we drove the 5 miles to Caulksville, paying the water bill…depositing checks…checking the mail. I said “hey, let’s go to walmart!” which surprised Carolyn…I’m not an impulse person…and Carolyn commented on how this was odd for me. I said “I feel like I’m supposed to be somewhere, but I don’t know where. I feel….restless. Like…something’s wrong.”  

  We got our stuff done and headed home. I dropped Carolyn off and told her I’d holler at her the next day. As soon as I got home, I unloaded everything and my phone rang. It was my mom. I had gotten a text from Boo earlier saying Bobbie was out of surgery and doing fine. I answered the phone and mom was SCREAMING. “There’s something wrong! Go to the hospital! They think Bobbie is bleeding internally! It’s bad!”

  I ran back in the house and told Tara I had to go, check the chickens for me please…I called Clint as I backed my Expedition out and sped down the highway. I made it to the hospital in record time.

  I ran directly to Bobbie’s room, like someone was guiding me. I flew in the door and there lay Bobbie. Her face was the color of clay, her breath labored. Her abdomen was swollen. Her lips were ashen. She was moaning.  Boo stood in the corner, on the phone, giving details to someone. Boo was crying and saying “hurry! just hurry!” I ran to the bedside and looked at Bobbie.  Her eyes opened and she looked up. “you just thought you couldn’t come today. I’ll do anything to make you come see me.” she whispered, trying to joke. Her tongue was thick and slurry. Her eyes were lifeless.  The nurses came banging into the room with a gurney. I kissed Bobbie’s forehead. It was cold. I  thought “I’ll never see her alive again. This is it. She’s not gonna make it.” I helped them get her on the gurney and grabbed the head of it and ran with the nurses down the hall to surgery. It was strange…such a comfortable thing for me to do…load someone up….run down the hall to surgery…it had been my job for so long. But this WASN’T my job and this was my sister. I felt that strange detachment that you feel about a patient you are working on…you can’t think about it too much…your gloved hands coated in their blood…she became a patient. I couldn’t cry, not now…that would come later, when there was time. Right now there was a bleeding patient and an O. R. There were details to sort out and calls to make. I stopped short of going into the O.R….oh, but if they had let me go in…I would have. Would I forget this was my sister if they had let me in? I’ve been elbow deep inside an abdomen…seen the glistening blood and muscle. I’ve held pressure to stop bleeding. I’ve felt that fear that we could lose a patient…a bleeding mother of 4… I’ve cut suture and suctioned the blood. I watched them take her and I knew. I knew they were prepping her belly, the betadine running and pooling under her back. I could see the incision, quick and sure…the belly filled with blood , pouring out of the incision…it’s TOO much …it’s TOO dark, the blood, it’s been there for TOO long…the doctor muttering under his breath…where’s the bleeder? SUCTION! handing the clamps as fast as you can. Counting the sponges out loud to the circulating nurse. The loud voices, calling for more blood..another IV …more sponges…more clamps..more hands to STOP THIS BLEEDING…  I watched the blood guy run by…once. twice. three times. I know you can’t check out less than two at a time. That’s six, I counted to myself. Finally I walked the 20 feet down to the waiting room. Boo was there, crying…I hugged her. She said “I knew something was wrong. no one would listen to me.” I assured her she had done all she should and silently cursed the recovery room that let this slip. After what seemed like forever, the doctor came out, tired and shaken. “We finally just stuck our hands in her and held  pressure in her abdomen. She got 6 units of blood. She’ll be in intensive care for a couple days.”

  We process. 6 units? most people have 6-8 units of blood total. They replaced her whole supply? Within a day, she gets 6 more. They replaced her blood TWICE.

  I go with Dad into the recovery room (you should have been with her in the FIRST recovery room. this wouldn’t have happened. it’s YOUR fault my internal forever oldest child tells me. you could have fixed this) She is laying on the gurney, the head of it as high as it will go. She has an oxygen mask on full blast. She is holding the mask on so tight, pressing it to her face, precious oxygen. She gasps the air in, swallows it in great gulps, lovely oxygen. I hear her lungs rattle with each breath.  She sees me and tries to say something. Dad can’t speak. He pulls back. Seeing his child so pale, so sick…I lean in. She pushes the mask aside.

                                                I THINK I DIED.

                                                I THINK I DIED.

                                                I’M PRETTY SURE I DIED.

 She repeats this several times, with out inflection or any sense that this will shock me.

Daddy recoils and leaves the room. I don’t blame him. I lean in, sure I’m hearing her last words.

                                                I DIED.

                                                PRETTY SURE I DIED.

She repeats it again and I nod. “Well, you just about killed me.” I say. This makes her smile and she grasps the mask to her face, sweet oxygen. Her voice is wet and raspy…too many fluids, too fast. I know this is the danger now…she’s alive. We have to keep her that way. But too much blood, too much stress, too much. Too much. Pneumonia? Infection? More bleeding? What next?  I shove my inner nurse aside and focus that she is alive. I now understand why ignorance is bliss. My knowledge makes me worry.

   I tell her I love her and kiss her pale, cool forehead again. She dozes off and I step out. Mom goes in, and Boo. I stay in the waiting room. Bobbie’s oldest kids go in. I call and text and plead on facebook for prayers.

                                   I know she isn’t out of the woods. I know this, but I say nothing. My mom knows it and is silent. We silently say nothing and we know.

  The next week is a blur of chickens, wedding plans, and Bobbie. My friends and church members call…text..email…facebook. I’m shocked at the people who reach out…and angry at the people who don’t. People that I have helped through trials. Even though I know they know…trust me. I KNOW they know what’s going on with Bobbie, my sister I love. I hear nothing from them. I ponder this and set it aside, sorting my life a little. I release these people from my life. Bobbie and I talk about this…people she has know as long as I have, that know she almost died and seem to not care. She releases them too and it is freeing to us. We are glad to sort these things out together, my pale sickly sister and I.  I go to the hospital every day just as soon as I can get someone to check the chickens. When she gets home, I take soups and casseroles and lasagna I have frozen for just such times. Bobbie is pale and weak, her abdomen still swollen. Jack is there, her estranged husband. He came to the hospital to see her. I was shocked at his pain. I felt I barely knew this man who had been with my sister for 14 years. Jack visits with me…he asks if I miss being a nurse. He asked me this in the intensive care unit as I was helping Bobbie with her bath. Bobbie said “how can she miss it? she’s taking care of me! I’m not going to give her a chance to miss it!” and we laughed. Jack thanked me for coming and for being nice. He says “Tell Clint I appreciate him being nice to me, too.” I assure him I will.

  At Bobbie’s house, she admits she’s confused. She’s not sure she wants to go thru with the divorce now. I tell her to wait, to pray. This will be a good test. She agrees and lets him move back in. This will be a good test, she says back to me. A good test.

                                         Jack passes the test.

She is happier now than ever, her children rising up and calling her blessed. Jack is the man she loves. He is different now…sweeter. More considerate. He takes Bobbie to church. They pray together. Almost losing her life has saved their marriage. This is one of those “…but then, God” stories. “Bobbie almost got divorced and almost died..but then, God stepped in.”

  There are pictures of Bobbie, Boo and I at Tara’s wedding. Tall, lanky Bobbie. Still a little pale, a little swollen, but she’s THERE. She is still in pain.  Boo, tall, pretty, smiling. Me in my roundness, all smiles and big hair and fake eyelashes.

  She leaves a little early, tiring so easily after the ordeal. We don’t talk much about what happened and when I ask her if she remembers saying I THINK I DIED, she doesn’t. I joke and ask if she saw a great light and Papaw and Granny. “Nope! Guess not!” she says. She says “I remember so little.” Thank God, I think to myself.

               3 weeks ago, I was in Walmart and my phone rings. It’s Bobbie. She’s crying. “What’s wrong?” I say, worried.

       “ I just went on your facebook wall..the day I almost died. I can’t believe the people that reached out. I can’t believe they were donating blood. I can’t believe I almost died!”

   I walk around walmart, talking softly into my headset, talking about blood and surgery and death, telling her I didn’t think I would see her alive again. I’ve told her this before, but this time it sinks in. I tell her about calling Ray and his shock. I tell her my whole church lifted her up in prayer. I tell her Clint cried. I tell her Tara is more concerned with Bobbie than her wedding. Well…almost.  

    I stop by the laundry detergent and wipe my eyes. I’m crying.

People worriedly glance my way.

I care NOT.

I put bread into the cart while saying “Praise God you’re ok!”

People are staring.             

I care NOT.

Bobbie and I talk about God and His plans and husbands and kids and she settles down. I head to the check out and say “I still wish you’d seen a bright light and Granny and Papaw.”

Bobbie laughs, still sniffling a little, and says “I’ll try better next time.”

I say back “oh, no! you better not! I’m not going thru this again! I’ll kill you if you try to die again”

The check out girl stares.

I care NOT.

I take my headset off after Bobbie hangs up and smile at the checkout girl. “That was my sister. I love her.”

 The checkout girl stares.

I care NOT.

I walk out of walmart and unload my groceries into the back of my Expedition. I climb into the seat, put my head on the steering wheel and just breathe, sweet oxygen.

 I thank God for the blood that saved us all.