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.

yard sale underwear, y'all :)

   I am not ashamed of my poor upbringing…I guess I never really was. I don’t think I knew how viciously poor we were.  Often, buying 4 children all new clothes to start the new school  year was just too much for my mom to afford and so…we made do. When I got old enough to drive, I’d hit yard sales or clearance racks…sometimes, women at our church would give Bobbie and me bags of clothes. We’d go thru them, sorting and picking what would work. I’d grab stuff and head to the treadle sewing machine…altering things, adding darts or patches to cover up they were once someone else’s stuff.

  One thing I remember thinking though, when I was about 12…when I grow up…I’m gonna have enough money to NOT wear….

                                  

                                                        yard sale underwear.

There. I said it. It’s out there. And it’s ok. I said it and I survived.  Never want to do it again, but by cracky, once you’ve worn yard sale underwear it’s all uphill.

  Mom would go to yard sales sometimes while we were at school and we’d get off the bus to find a few things laying on our bed. A shirt. A pair of jeans. A dress. A bra. And…faded cotton underwear, marked with masking tape “ten cents”. We’d wash all the clothes in the wringer washer and hang them out to dry on the line. Once, mom brought me home a pair that had leopards on them…and very carefully in permanent marker on the tag the name “Brenda” was written. I cut the tag out after they were washed. You know that saying about having on clean underwear if you had a car accident? Well…I didn’t want somebody to think I was “Brenda”.

    I never told anyone at school and would have DIED if they found out. Especially “Brenda”. Once, I bought a cute yellow dress at a yard sale…I was friends with the girl I bought it from…and she was nice enough to never tell anybody. Thanks, Gabby. I owe you.

    My first prom dress I bought for twelve dollars and fifty cents. My friend Jennifer had worn it to a prom a year before. It was turquoise with a white lace overlay…it was long and had poofy cap sleeves. She wanted to charge me ten dollars, I said “oh, more than that! Fifteen?” she wouldn’t take my offer, so we split the difference. Twelve dollars, fifty cents.  I took it home…cut the poofy sleeves off…mom cut it off tea length, leaving the white overlay just a little longer…added my mom’s long white evening gloves from HER prom and along with the beaded purse she had also  carried, I was set. My good friend Russ and I set out for prom and danced the night away. He knew how poor I was and didn’t care. He was my friend and my friends knew all my yard sale secrets and kept them to themselves, as they had secrets of their own. Dads or moms who left. Divorces. Abuse.  Alcoholism. Oh, didn’t we all have secrets? Didn’t we each alter things to try to make them different and look better?  

   I became known for my funky style of dress…big men’s jackets (fished out of a goodwill bin) white lace boots that looked like something Madonna or Cyndi Lauper would wear (yard sale) cheap canvas tennis shoes from Walmart (2 dollars a pair) that I would take the shoelaces out and write funny things on in ink. Lots of pins and medals stuck all over huge men’s denim jackets I bought at a second hand store. Long men’s shirts that came to my knees, with belts around my waist…I’d wear socks that matched my shirts and tuck my pants into them. I’d layer big sweat shirts over tank tops I found in clearance bins.

   I don’t go to yard sales much anymore…but I have kept my love for second hand stores. Half of my wardrobe is secondhand…Dresses, coats, jeans,shirts…I have passed that love down to my daughter and son…neither of them mind yard sale or second hand clothing. One thing I didn’t pass down? Yard sale underwear. I buy mine new and throw them away the minute they look threadbare or faded. I throw them away and I think of my mother, trying so hard to keep us in clothes and keep the rent paid and food on the table on her nurses’ salary, buying underwear for me and my siblings at yard sales in the small town in which we lived.

Fried Chickens :)

  It hasn’t sunk in yet to me that it’s winter. Today is Groundhog Day, that day when we all look toward a large rodent to see our future. Is it just me, or are these the actions of a drunk or mentally ill person? “Think I’ll head up in the attic and see if the squirrels know how much annual rain fall we’re gonna get next year!” We haven’t even HAD winter yet, so six more weeks of it seems like no big deal. Also, it’s 65 outside and I’ve got stuff trying to come up in the flower beds. I have a little poem I say when I see yellow flowers starting up and we haven’t even had a good freeze yet. I don’t know if I wrote it or if I read it somewhere. It goes:

                                      Daffodil, you silly thing

                                      go back to bed…

                                      it’s not yet spring.

  Daffodils don’t listen to me, they are Narcissus J and they eventually get their blooms frostbitten off.

  The reason it hasn’t sunk in it’s winter is what we dealt with last summer. A month of 115 degree days, no rain, no relief. It was hard on the farm animals, they started looking poor and listless. I felt their pain.

  But the most pain I felt was dealing with big chickens. Imagine..26,000 chickens in a 50’ by 500’ solid sidewall house. 9 fans per house. 3 chicken houses.  Cool cells, with their pads moistened by pond water, the air pulled thru by fans, using evaporation to cool the air. Fogger lines running thru the houses with water at 120 pounds of pressure per square inch, pushing the water out in a fine mist to cool even further. Even with all this…we can only drop the temp by 20 degrees. So at best, I was running them at 95 during the day and maybe down to 78 at night. Big chickens need to be kept cool. They run a normal body temp of 106. When they get overheated, often they’ll just lay down and die. They are wimpy, these chickens and not at all like the chickens my granny had that ran and scratched and fought. These chickens only know a few things. Eat. Drink. Poop. Sleep. That’s it. Keep them warm when they’re little and cool when they’re big. The latter is hard to do when it’s 115.

  Sometimes, for whatever reason, there’d be a “dead spot” where the air didn’t get stirred enough. You know dead spots when you see them because there will be a pile of dead chickens. There goes your profits, there goes the feed you put in them, the weight they gained…all gone.

   There was one Sunday morning in the middle of this heat wave that  I went to walk chickens and I walked into house 3 and there were dead chickens EVERYWHERE…it ended up being over a thousand. Who knows what happened, it didn’t matter. We added time to the cool cells and the next day it was better, but who knows. I was carrying as many 6 pound chickens as I could per hand and kicking 3 up the aisle with my feet when I felt a burning in my right wrist. I ignored it and  kept on carrying dead chickens, kept throwing them as far as I could so keep from having to carry them as far…

I don’t know WHAT I did to my wrist, but it’s never been the same. It pops and burns and my fingers go numb. I’m sure it’s carpal tunnel, I’m a nurse, I worked in surgery...but admitting it would mean having to FIX it and that ain’t happenin’. At least not right now.

  We found the big pile of dead chickens right about the time we started running out of water. So, Clint found a tanker truck and every evening would haul water from one pond to another. I would go out there as I drove back and forth on the Kubota, checking chickens. I had to check chickens every hour in that kind of heat and sometimes, I’d be out there so long doing something, I just wouldn’t even go home…just check them again. Check the water pressure. Check the fog lines. Check the holding tanks. Check. Check. Check. That’s actually the sound baby chicks make. It’s not “cheep cheep” it’s CHECK CHECK. I barely had time for showers or meals. We grazed on cereal and sandwiches. I became the color of mahogany and began wearing sunblock for the first time in my life. My house became dirtier and dirtier. I wouldn’t even go check the mail in Ratcliff for fear that I’d have a flat or something and not be able to get back to the chicken houses. I’d walk outside every hour on the hour to climb up on the Kubota, the air so hot it felt like I was trying to breathe in an oven. The newscasters would warn viewers to STAY INSIDE!! DON’T GO OUT!! and I’d laugh and head outside, knowing I was going to spend 20 minutes every hour out in this heat. I became accustomed to it and after a while, it didn’t bother me so much.

  When they finally came and got the chickens, I was at a loss. I was shell shocked and stunned. I avoided going outside, even when it cooled off to 95. I didn’t want to get in the pool, didn’t want to go for walks, didn’t want to work in the flower beds. I wanted to stay inside in the cool and dark.

   Even now, when I go outside and it’s 50, I’m surprised. I fully expect to take a deep breath and feel the inside of my lungs sizzle. We were put on a slow simmer last summer and reduced to the bare basics of what we were, which was trying to survive and keep the farm intact.

  I would dream at night of broken water lines or dry river beds filled with dead chickens. I couldn’t even talk on the phone to my friends because I was either driving TO the chicken houses, AT the chicken houses, driving BACK from the chicken houses. It consumed us. My friends told me later they grieved for me…they’d turn on the local weather, see the temps… and just hang their heads and say prayers for chicken farmers. Clint and I were on the local news once…Clint’s niece is married to their camera man and they needed a story about heat affecting chicken farmers. I had my face on that day (if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have let them come out)  and so they came out and filmed us, walking thru the chickens. We watched it back and laughed, Clint sounding so southern, like those people they interview about the tornado jumping over their trailer house. “mama said, I think it’s a tornado!! sounds like a dadburn TRAIN!”

  So, on this Groundhog Day…as you and your family gathers around the Groundhog Tree and exchange rodent themed presents…as you baste your roasted Groundhog in it’s own juices, singing Groundhog Carols…thank him for six more weeks of winter. This ol’ gal sure would appreciate it