In 1965 when I was a freshman in college my parents bought their first home ever in Rosenberg, Texas, after almost twenty years of marriage.   My dad was the assistant superintendent of the local school district and my mother taught second grade in one of the elementary schools in the district.   Since I wasn’t living with them, I’m not sure how the decision was made to hire someone to help with cleaning the bigger new house, but when I was home for spring break, my mom introduced me to Viola who was hired for that purpose.   When I returned to stay the summer with my folks, Viola was gone.

I wasn’t sure what happened to Viola but was so self- absorbed I didn’t really care.   Early in the summer Mom informed me we would have a new woman who was coming to work for us and encouraged me to keep the stereo at a lower volume level on the lady’s first visit.   I was in a Diana Ross and the Supremes phase and preferred the speakers to vibrate as I sang along with Diana but I obligingly lowered the level for our new help.

I needn’t have bothered.   Willie Meta Flora stepped into our house and lives and rocked all of us for more than forty-five years.   She became my mother’s truest friend and supported her through the deaths of her mother, brother and two husbands.   She nursed my grandmother and my dad and uncle during their respective battles with mental illness, colon cancer and cerebral palsy.   She watched over and protected and loved and cared for my family as she did her own.   In many ways, we became her second family and she chose to keep us.

Willie and my mom shared a compulsion for honesty and directness that somehow worked to keep them close through the good times and the hard times in both of their lives.  They were stubborn strong women and butted heads occasionally, but most of all, they laughed together.   Willie’s sense of humor and quick wit kept Mom on her toes and at the top of her own game in their talks.   They also shared a deep love for the same man, my dad.   In her own way, Willie loved my dad as much as Mom did, and my father loved her and loved being with her right back.    His death broke both their hearts.

Although Willie kept her own apartment, she and Mom basically lived together in the years following the death of Mom’s second husband.   Mom planned her days around the time near dusk when Willie would be there to spend the night with her.   Willie became her lifeline to maintaining her independence, and the two of them grew older and crankier as time passed.   Willie and I talked on the phone frequently and she began to tell me she was worried about Mom’s safety and getting lost when she drove around town.    I dismissed her fears and ignored the signs of dementia until Mom’s 80th birthday when it became apparent she had major problems in everyday living.

Not long afterwards, I was forced to make a choice about my mother’s long term care needs and opted to move her to a Memory Care Unit in a facility in Houston which was a thousand miles from my home in South Carolina.   Why not move her closer to me?   A good question with a complicated answer that included my trying to keep her available to Willie and her family who could drive Willie to see Mom.    If my mother could choose between visiting with me or seeing Willie, there was no contest.   I would always come in second.

Mom will be 85 next month and struggles with the ongoing physical and mental battles associated with Alzheimer’s in her ultimate race towards death.   This past fall I moved her again to a different residence that is still in Texas but much closer to my second home which is also now in Texas.   Alas, she’s two hours farther from Willie  and Willie has only been able to visit her once since her move.

Willie will be 81 next month.   She and Mom have the same birthday month, and now they have the same disease.   We don’t talk on the phone any more because she can’t form words I can understand.   When I visited her yesterday, she didn’t recognize me and was uncomfortable with getting up out of her bed, just as Mom is sometimes when I go to see her.   Willie’s five daughters and three granddaughters are coping with the same problems I’ve faced with Mom – trying to keep her comfortable in a safe environment.   They have the additional complications of differences of opinion about Willie’s care and what the environment should be .   I decided being an only child has a few advantages.

When I think of the strength of these two women and their determination to rise above their inauspicious beginnings in an era when women weren’t valued for their strong wills, I feel a sense of admiration and respect and gratitude for the examples they’ve been for me as they both loved me in different ways.   And I am struck by the similarity of their conditions in their last days.   Leora, one of Willie’s daughters, told me she thought Mom and Willie just might end their race toward death in a tie.   I’m thinking it will be a photo finish.

DADDY DREAMS

            When I woke up, the dream was still in my consciousness, and I had a strange sensation of crossing a threshold through time into another world.  I tried to remember…

I see the car stop in front of a small building that looks vaguely familiar.  My grandmother, my aunt, and I get out of the car.  We’re not in a hurry as we climb the steps that lead to the door.  I notice that my grandmother and my aunt are very young and beautiful.  My grandmother’s hair is short and wavy and dark.  She looks like she just left the beauty parlor.  My aunt’s body shows no sign of the osteoporosis that plagued her in later years.  Her back is straight, and her walk strong and sure.  The two of them laugh and talk together, and I want to say something, but they ignore me.

The little building has no windows and no sign.  I know that I belong inside, and I’m anxious to open the door.  My grandmother turns an ancient glass knob, and my aunt and I follow her into the room.

The room is dimly lit with a single bulb attached to the ceiling.  My eyes struggle to make an adjustment that allows me to gaze at my surroundings.  At that moment the brightness changes like a dimmer switch has been turned up a notch.  I can see clearly.

“We thought you’d never get here,” my dad says.  “You must’ve taken the long way.  You didn’t run out of gas, did you?”  He laughs and winks at me.  “I told you when you first started driving to always check the gasoline gauge, didn’t I?  Remember that?  You wouldn’t get far without gas, and you always had somewhere to go.”

My father wears his World War II army air corps uniform with the wings on his collar and insignia on the sleeve.  The knot on his tie is perfectly tied.  He is handsome, and I am happy to see him.  His blonde hair has a military cut, and he, too, looks incredibly youthful.  He sits on a wooden bench in the room.  He looks comfortable and very much at ease.

“Which way did you come?” he asks.

“I came…” I start to answer.  “I’m not sure.  I had to pick up your mother and sister, so I left early.  I didn’t want to be late, and they wouldn’t tell me exactly where we were going.  Now here we are.  I’ve missed talking to you so much.”

“We talk all the time,” he says and smiles.  “It’s a different kind of language, but it’s as real as the King’s English.”  He beckons me to sit next to him on the bench.

“I’m so glad you have on your uniform,” I say as I sit down.  “I love that uniform.  When I found it in the cedar chest, I thought I could wear it, but it was too big.  Daddy, why didn’t you ever talk about the war?”

“What’s there to say about war?”  He fingers one of the wings on his collar.  He has the prettiest hands, I think.  “What do you want to hear?”  He looks directly at me.

“I don’t know, but I want you to tell me something.  Anything, I guess.  I saw the pictures, so I know it was real.”

“Of course, you saw the pictures and played with the uniform.  That makes it real.  And, now, you’ve found the letters that I wrote to your mother and the other family members, haven’t you?  Isn’t that enough?”

“Yes, I found the letters, and no, I don’t think it’s enough.”

My father opens a box on the bench beside him and removes a piece of paper.  He closes his eyes and begins to recite from memory.

December 28, 1944

Dearest Darling,

             I’ve often wondered if you couldn’t guess just how much I miss you at different times.  You know, sometimes you are the only thing that makes me want to be back there.  I could go on forever telling you that I see you everywhere I go, etc., but you’d enjoy that too much.  In not so long a time I’ll be back with you.  It already seems like ages to me.  Do you ever sort of forget about me, unconsciously, I mean, just forget?  That is one of the most horrible things I can think of.  Well, enough of that.

            Tonight some of the guys wanted me to play on the Field team, but I had a rather hard day so, for once, I refused a basketball game.

            Well, Baby, I must go to sleep, for I am very tired, but not too tired to say goodnight to the one I love.

Yours forever,

My dad opens his eyes and returns the paper to the box.  He looks at me again.

“That was the war,” he says.  “The day I wrote that letter I flew my first bombing mission over Germany.  I was nineteen years old and the navigator for my crew.  I was responsible for locating a town that we could blow up, and then for finding our way back to England.  Before that day I had been in training with my buddies.  We waited for orders that would allow us to prove our manhood.  We bragged to each other about what we would do.

“When we touched the runway coming in from that mission, though, I felt sick, and it wasn’t from the altitude or lack of oxygen.  The smell of gun powder made my eyes burn.  The sounds of machine guns reverberated in my ears.  But, it was the sight of smoke and fire and devastation and death that made me write to your mother that night.  And fear.  Not the fear of dying, but the fear of being forgotten.”

A dog runs past me and jumps into my father’s lap.  I don’t recognize the dog.

“Dad, is this your dog?”

“If it is, make sure it stays outside,” my grandmother says from behind me.  I stand and move away from the bench to see my grandmother sitting at her sewing machine.  She looks up from the contraption’s hammering needle and frowns at me.

“How many times do I have to tell you that dogs belong out of doors?” she asks.  I have no reply because I can’t count that high.

“Why do you live so far away?” she continues.  “You never come to see us.  Your grandfather isn’t well, and he wants to know if you’re going to be here for Father’s Day.  I told him you wouldn’t.  Then, I wondered why you wouldn’t.  Well, Miss Busybody who has so many questions for her daddy, I’m requesting an answer from you.”

“I didn’t know he’s sick,” I say.

“Who?  Who’s sick?” she responds with irritation.

“You said my grandfather’s sick,” I remind her.  She shakes her head and pushes the pedal of the sewing machine.  The yammering noises resume.

“I have a good job,” I say to her back.

“You had a good job less than two hours away from us.  Now it takes days to visit you, if we can even find your house.  Are you telling me there are no good jobs any closer than a thousand miles from here?”  The machine whirrs faster.

“You never come to see me,” I say.  “None of my family ever comes to my house for Thanksgiving or Christmas or my birthday, either.  It’s not fair for me to be the only one who travels every holiday.  One night I had to spend the entire night in an airport by myself.  I slept on a sofa in the security guard’s office, for heaven’s sake.”

The sewing machine stops.  My grandmother stands up and faces me.

“I didn’t move.  You moved.  You moved a long time ago, and a thousand miles away.  I’m young and stubborn.  You’re old and obstinate.  You get that from your mother’s side of the family.”  She laughs at her own joke.  I laugh with her because I’m glad that she loves me enough to miss me.

“Thank God you can drive me home today.  Tell your aunt I’m ready to go,” she says.  She gestures toward the machine.  “That material was too flimsy and couldn’t hold the thread.  I’m leaving it for the next fool who’s willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for thin fabric.”

“Oh, Mama,” my aunt says.  “You’re such a mess.  Let’s not worry or fuss about something as silly as material.  You’ll get too upset over nothing.  I’m sure we can stop along the way and find you a different kind.”

We walk to the door in front of us.  My aunt turns the ancient glass knob, and we cross through the portal together.

The car is gone.

Good grief.   Too much information.   By the time I finish explaining, no one will care.

PROLOGUE

            The house that occupied the address at 1021 Timber Lane was an unremarkable story-and-a-half red brick structure with a bay window on the lower floor that jutted out toward the narrow concrete walkway leading from the front door to the driveway of the two-car garage facing the street.   The first time I saw it in 1964, however, it reminded me of pictures I’d seen of English Tudor country homes with its dormered roof and cedar shutters, and I couldn’t imagine how it came to rest on a cement slab in Rosenberg, Texas.  My schoolteacher parents took me to see the house initially when I came home to visit them for Christmas break of my freshman year at The University of Texas in Austin before they purchased the place the following spring.  They were like happy, almost giddy children with a new toy and while I shared their excitement of finally having a home that belonged to our immediate family after eighteen years of rental houses and living with my mother’s mother, I was more interested in college life and the girls in Blanton Dormitory at school than I was in a house in a town I had never lived in.

The women whose lives intersected with mine in that house on Timber Lane deeply impacted the person I am almost fifty years later.   My grandmothers, my dad’s sister, my mother, and her best friend who took care of our home and family through the Timber Lane years and beyond – all of these women walked the rooms of that house with me at some point in the time my parents called it home, and all of them loved me and supported me to the best of their abilities even though I was an absentee family member for over forty years except for random brief visits.   Life is about choices, and I chose to leave the safety net of this house on the concrete slab and the family it owned  to seek my happiness in other houses with other women in faraway places.

I live in two houses in two states today and label myself a bi-stateual.   One of the houses is in Texas again where I care for my aging mother who has Alzheimer’s disease and barely recognizes me now.    The other is a thousand miles away in South Carolina where I’ve lived my entire adult life.   Recently I’ve realized we never really own our homes even though we may hold a title to them.   We’re really just passing through on a journey from here to there.   I haven’t quite made it to “there” yet, but I’m getting closer… and have earned the right to call it like I see it.

Sixty years later I still love my cowboys and living in Texas again is a strong reminder of their mystique in the Lone Star State of my birth.  The folklore that surrounds them and the  expectations of Hollywood happy endings in the midst of the vicissitudes of life have inspired me during good times and bad.   Thanks, guys.

Life is about change, though, and I’ve had new heroes who don’t ride horses or wear six-shooters on a regular basis.   The Famous Heroes are household names and not surprisingly for a lesbian: women.   I could list fifty of them, but I’ll name ten.    Susan B. Anthony.   Gertrude Stein.   Barbara Jordan.   Gloria Steinem.   Geraldine Ferraro.   Ann Richards.   Molly Ivins.   Eudora Welty.   Meryl Streep.   Ellen DeGeneres.   These are the activists and authors and actors whose courage stands out to me.   The villains may not have mustaches any more but these women met them at some point in their lives and stood up to them through their words and actions.   You’ll be able to name your own Famous Heroes if you think about it for a minute.

And then think about the Unfamous Ones – those heroes who are often unsung.   You know them.   They are the women and men who’ve lost children, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers and parents along the way and have kept moving forward in spite of their losses.   They are the parents who’ve encouraged their children to better themselves through education and who’ve put their money where their mouth is and paid that costly college tuition and room and board and books and hoped their kids would have better opportunities than they did.   The villains aren’t necessarily people any more, either.   Cancer, alcoholism, drug addiction, Alzheimer’s, divorce, betrayal,  politics at work, corporate greed, financial difficulties,  the Me First Culture of selfishness and self-centeredness are a few of the villains we may face today.   Our six-shooters don’t have enough ammunition sometimes when we fire away at these outlaws but our Unfamous Heroes don’t give up and find within themselves the strength to stand and deliver.

If you live long enough, you’ll figure out the world isn’t perfect and you’ll definitely meet some nasty villains, but remember you aren’t alone in the battles.   Your heroes have gone before you.   May the spirits of those heroes ride with you and give you comfort and encouragement in the showdown moments of your life.

TEXAS HIGHWAY 105 – MY LESSON IN LIBERALISM

            Texas State Highway 105 starts five miles inside the Louisiana border between Orange and Vidor.  It’s one of the countless farm and state roads that make up the highway system of a state that stretches almost a thousand miles from east to west.  If you’re headed to El Paso from Beaumont, pack a lunch.  Or, better yet, a couple of lunches.  But, whatever you do, don’t take SH 105.

This well-traveled road claims fewer than two hundred miles but passes through seven counties: Orange, Jefferson,  Hardin,  Liberty, Montgomery, Grimes, and Washington.  Many of the miles consist of winding four lanes, and the rest are very good, crooked, two-lane routes.  I lived 18 miles north of Highway 105 when I was growing up in the loblolly piney woods of Grimes County.  Now, on a good day, I can walk to that road from my home in the little village of Montgomery.  It runs smack-dab through the middle of town and is a favorite commuter connection from Houston to wherever people drive to escape the interstates that are frequently at a standstill.  Long lines of school buses and parents picking up children from the nearby elementary and middle schools create our own version of traffic jams in the middle of the afternoons during the week.  Two stoplights move everybody along in an orderly manner, but I avoid that stress whenever possible.  On Friday afternoons, the traffic gets heavy earlier because the weekend wannabe Hell’s Angels bikers leave their day jobs and immediately head west on 105 from the cities and suburbs.  I think they must carry their bandanas and jeans with them to work so they won’t have to go home to change clothes before they hit the road.

My parents and grandparents made many trips on SH 105.  My grandfather referred to it as “one hundred five” when he talked about how to get from his home in Richards to Beaumont to visit his daughter Lucille and her family.  “Just take one hundred five all the way,” he’d say whenever anyone asked him how he drove the distance.  My dad motored the twenty-five miles from Navasota to Brenham on 105, where the road ends, on his visits to Austin every summer.  He took me with him whenever he could.  At Brenham, we picked up the major highway from Houston to Austin, SH 290.

I didn’t process the names of the roads we drove then, and my perception of distances beyond Navasota to the south, Crabbs Prairie to the north, and Conroe to the east was that other lands were far, far away.  I was certain that Brenham must’ve been a magical kingdom because it was the home of the Blue Bell Creameries, and everyone knew they made the best ice cream in the state.  Founded in 1907, the company was named after the native wildflowers that grew with heedless abandon in the surrounding countryside.  I didn’t realize that when I was growing up, though, and I probably wouldn’t have cared anyway.  All I knew then was that the Dutch Chocolate from Mr. McAfee’s drug store couldn’t have tasted any sweeter than it already did on the cones that were two scoops for a nickel.

The day before my sixty-fourth birthday was a magnificent Texas day.  The temperature was perfect, the blue skies were clear, and my dogs, Red and Annie, were in high spirits.  I decided to drive west from Montgomery on 105 to Navasota, the place where I was born.  I loaded the dogs in the back seat of my pickup and turned left at one of the two stoplights in town.

I didn’t have to drive more than a mile to find the scenery that I love.  As soon as I passed Old Plantersville Road, I began to see the patches of bluebonnets that make 105 spectacular in April.  At first, they were scattered in with the reddish-orange Indian blankets and the pale pink buttercups and only appeared on the sides of the road.  Then, the patches grew thick with the deep blue that is the mature color of the state flower.  A few minutes more, and I saw a ranch with a sea of bluebonnets in its pastures, and it reminded me of the dazzling Caribbean ocean without waves.  I knew it was a good day to be on the road.

Five miles to the west of Montgomery,  I made my first stop in Dobbin, which has no traffic lights but does have a cowboy roadhouse called Holder’s, which is owned by a proprietor of the same name.  Bobby Holder doesn’t look like a cowboy, though.  He wears faded blue overalls and a dark T-shirt beneath them.  He resembles an Appalachian mountain man with hair the color of charcoal mixed with some white ash tightly pulled down his back in a long ponytail.  His thick mustache is the same shade of black and white.  A plain, unfashionable baseball cap completes his look.  The first time I saw him, I labeled him in my mind as a hillbilly hippie, right-wing extremist, and all-around Bad Guy.  That was a few visits ago.

The restaurant is as interesting as its owner.  The building is ancient and consists of three distinct areas visible from the small, gravel parking lot.  The weathered wood building has a steep rusted tin roof that promises a larger space than is visible from the parking area.  A little log section to the right is clearly the barbecue pit.  Smoke rises from the flue and drifts occasionally into the middle porch space, which is open-air and the place where four stained, wooden tables with benches accommodate the “eat-in” customers.  (Feel free to carve your initials on a table.  Everyone else does.)  To the left, a window for ordering is surrounded by the handwritten menu that’s written on a chalkboard tacked to the wall.  The tiny kitchen is behind the ordering window, and the smells of cooking barbecue mix deliciously with the aroma of burgers frying on the grill while you wait patiently for service.  A sign under the window warns: “If you’re in a hurry, go to Houston.”

Imagine every Texas roadhouse you ever saw in western movies, put that in high-definition, surround-sound, Blue Ray, 3-D with the appropriate eyewear, or whatever, and you can begin to picture Holder’s.  Bobby is quick to mention to anyone who’s a newcomer that Hollywood discovered his place last year, and he has a framed newspaper article to prove it.  When a film was shot on location in the Houston area, the crew made a stop at Holder’s and a local reporter penned the story that immortalized the restaurant.  The picture hangs on the wall to the left of the ordering window and occupies a place of prominence among the vast array of wall art vying for attention.  I could have easily missed it in the midst of an extensive collection of frightening heads of longhorn cattle with varying horn sizes from small to huge, an “audition” sign for waitresses for Hooter’s that consists of two very large holes for women’s breasts,  all the brightly colored Texas license plates ever hammered by inmates of its legendary correctional institutions, high school football schedules for the Montgomery Bears for the past few years and assorted photos of satisfied customers.  The sound of country music legends blares from speakers in a large, mostly vacant room behind the front porch eating section.

My first trip to the restaurant was with my partner, Teresa, last month during the week we moved to Montgomery.  We were driving home from Navasota on SH 105 and noticed it from the road and thought it looked intriguing, so we stopped.   After we ordered our cheeseburger baskets from a friendly woman who was also the cook, we asked her if we could sit inside the huge room at a small wooden table instead of the benches on the porch.  We were late afternoon customers and had the entire place to ourselves, so that wasn’t a problem.  The interior room looked like a large barn with a loft full of tools and materials that indicated the room was a work in progress.  The back end of an old, but newly painted, aqua blue Thunderbird Convertible was mounted on a wall near our table.  Teresa and I were startled and amused to see this as the focal point of décor in the barn-like setting.  The space was large enough for a dance floor, and with the country music blaring, I imagined it was the perfect spot for weekend Texas two-stepping until I saw the hours of operation posted: M – TH 10:00 – 5:00. FR – SAT 10:00 – 7:00. SUN CLOSED.  Unless you danced early, you weren’t dancing at Holder’s.

When the cook brought us our cheeseburger baskets, I asked her about the restaurant.

“Bobby owns it—he’s the guy in the ponytail.  He does the barbecuing himself, and sometimes he handles the grill, too.  He takes a lot of pride in his place here,” she said.

“It looks like he’s trying to expand and add entertainment in this space,” I said.

“Yes, he does all the work himself, so it takes a little while,” she said.

“How long has he been working on it?” Teresa asked.

“About five years,” she replied.  “Can I get you gals anything else?”

We shook our heads, and she left us to our meal.  I suppose it’s possible to get a bad hamburger in Texas if you go to one of the chain places that are the same in every state.  But if you get a burger at Holder’s, you’ll never think of hamburgers in the same way again.  The ground lean beef is cooked perfectly with the right amount of seasonings.  The lettuce and tomatoes are fresh, and the onions mixed with mustard add a flavorful kick.  The melted American cheese oozes to the corners of the toasted old-fashioned buns that are just the right size.  The French fries are homemade and piled high.  You’ll go away, but you won’t go away hungry.

That first visit was memorable for more than the food, though.

The morning after we ate that first time at Holder’s, Teresa and I talked about our projects for the Texas house.  We had decided to paint several of the rooms a different color and needed to buy the paint from the local hardware store.

“Have you seen my billfold?” I asked her when it wasn’t in its place next to the kitchen stove.

“No,” she said.  “Did you look in the bedroom?”

With that, we began an exhaustive search through the house and outside.  We looked in the truck.  No wallet.  I tried not to panic, but I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as I thought of all that was lost.  Since we were traveling from South Carolina to Texas and cash was a concern, I had over six hundred dollars in my wallet, and that was a whopping amount of money for our budget.  All of my credit cards, driver’s license, everything that held the clue to my financial identity were in that billfold, and I didn’t have it.  What in the world had I done?

“When was the last time you paid for something?” Teresa asked.

I tried to think.  The last time I could remember paying for anything was the food at Holder’s the afternoon before.  I told Teresa that we needed to drive back to Dobbin to retrace our steps, but neither of us expected to see the money again.  I felt physically sick.

We had barely backed out of our driveway when my cell phone rang.  It was Claudia, the realtor who handled the purchase of our home in Montgomery.  She told me that Bobby Holder called her and said he found her card in a wallet that I had left in his restaurant the previous evening.  It was the only phone number he could find to try to contact me to let me know that it was safe.  An overpowering feeling of relief poured through me, and I felt like I could breathe again.  Teresa and I were ecstatic, giddy at the bullet we’d dodged.  We glided west on 105 to Holder’s.

When Bobby handed me my wallet, he was almost apologetic for having to go through it to look for a number.  “I saw all that cash, and I saw the South Carolina driver’s license.  I knew how I would feel if I were this far from home with no money, cards, or anything else.  I worried about it all night.”

I offered him a reward, but he refused to have any of that, and I took a second look at this man whose character I so quickly judged by his appearance less than twenty-four hours ago.  I have always been proud of my liberal leanings with their ostensible lack of labels, but I realized with shame that I was guilty of the very prejudices I loathed.  Bobby and I were different, all right, but I was wrong to assume that made him incapable of good.

“You have a customer for life,” I said.  “Even if you didn’t have fabulous food, I’d be back.  I owe you for more than you know.”

I’m glad I stopped at Holder’s today on my birthday eve.  The cheeseburger basket is as fabulous as the first one.  Bobby isn’t in the café today, but the country legends blare on from the speakers in the back room, and somehow the back end of the Thunderbird Convertible seems the perfect décor.  I was right.  It’s a great day to be on the road, and Red and Annie are ready to ride after polishing off the last of my fries.

As for me, I’d be on Old Plantersville Road in Montgomery County, Texas, USA, which is where I was today.   The county workers were mowing the grass and weeds along OPR while I walked with my old dog Annie and the smell of freshly mowed winter clover was intoxicating.   Clouds hid the Texas sun but they were friendly non-threatening light grey wisps that moved quickly from west to east and didn’t bother me a bit.

I have friends that live in the pastures in the small farms along Old Plantersville Road.   At least, I consider them to be friends as I consider OPR itself to be a friend, but these beauties have limited interest in me and my dog.

Ho hum.   Just another day in Paradise.

Is that an Apple?

Let’s pretend we don’t see it.

Ok.  How often do we see an Apple on our fence post?

It’s such a pretty Apple, and it smells so good.

Who was it who warned us about eating Apples?   I’m thinking they were kidding.

I don’t think one little Apple could be a problem.   Let’s go for it.

Delicious.   And I don’t feel the least bit guilty, do you?   Nope.

The End.

This is why I love Old Plantersville Road.

Only in Texas, I’m sure.

I had an almost uncontrollable urge to abandon my Dodge Dakota and run flying to the horse, leap in the saddle and gallop wildly out of the parking lot with the wind blowing my hair around me in swirls!   Ah, so many problems with that fantasy, though.   It’s unlikely I could run anywhere these days and certainly not a prayer of leaping into a saddle.  Ouch!   And as for the hair blowing in the wind, Brad Pitt might pull that look off, but my hair hasn’t been long enough to make a swirl since I was in grammar school many moons ago.

I shoulda been a cowboy.   Instead, I was a CPA.    A stockbroker.   A financial advisor.    A vice president of investments.   A college accounting instructor.   A church minister of music.    But never a cowboy except when I was a little girl growing up in rural East Texas and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count.   So, today when I saw the riderless horse standing quietly next to me in the parking lot, I was reminded of the cowboy I wasn’t.

It’s okay, though.   In real life it’s much easier to ride a desk than a horse and allow books and movies and television westerns to feed my fantasies of the cowboy’s romantic nomadic existence.

Hmmm…and maybe it wasn’t the horses I was interested in anyway.

She sits in her large recliner that is covered with worn blankets for extra warmth.

She is shrunken with age and her spine is so curved by scoliosis she slumps down into the

bowels of the chair.   It seems to swallow her tiny body.

She has lost weight since she came to this place three months ago.   She doesn’t eat.

Her meals are pureed in a blender and fed through a large syringe.

Open, please.  Thank you.

She wears bright blue flowered pajamas which I know don’t belong to her.

She is covered by a Christmas blanket and looks like an incongruous mixture of Hawaii

with the North Pole.

Her beautiful white hair is uncombed today and she periodically raises her right hand to

carefully brush a few strands from her forehead.   There, that’s better.

Two other women sit in similar recliners in the dark den lit only by the reflected light of

a massive television screen which is the focal point of the room.

How I Met Your Mother is playing this afternoon.   No one watches this episode about

misadventures on New Year’s Eve.

I find the irony in the sitcom’s name since the woman in Chair Number One is my mother.

She has needed care for the past four years, and I have sat with her as her dementia progressed

in medical jargon from mild to moderate to severe.   Severe is where we are for sure.

I try to talk to her about visiting my aunt over the weekend.   No response.

Instead, she gazes at her black leather shoes on the floor in front of her.

Slowly, very deliberately, she bends over and painstakingly reaches for her left shoe.

I move to help her because I am afraid she’ll fall out of the chair.

Do you want to put on your shoes, Mom?

She stares vacantly at me and shakes her head.

Ok, I say and return to my seat on the large overstuffed sofa next to her chair.

I make conversation with one of two sisters who care for my mother and the

two other mothers who sit in the recliners.   Mothers and daughters and sisters.

We are all connected in the little den with the big tv.

My mother ignores me as she continues her ritual of laboriously picking up her

black shoes one by one, tugging on the tongue to ready it for her foot, fiddling with the

shoelaces as if to adjust them and then lowering the shoe to the floor in front of her to the

same place it was before.     She does this over and over again.   Ad infinitum.

During one of her attempts, she drops a shoe beyond her reach, and I put it in front

of her chair with the other one.

Do you need help to put on your shoes?  I ask again.

No.  I have to keep on this road, she answers.   She was on a mission.

The mother in Chair Number Two tells me she tried to help my mother with her shoes earlier.

She told me to get away from them so I did, the woman said with a note of exasperation.

I’m sorry, I say.   That isn’t really who she is.

But I’m wrong.   That is who she is now.

I talk and try to avoid watching my mother and her little black shoes for an eternity

that is only an hour.

Mom, I have to go, I say.

She looks at me with some level of recognition and says Don’t leave me.

I’ll be back in a day or two, I say and hug her and kiss her on the cheek and tell

her I love her.   I love you too, she says.   I really do.

A CHRISTMAS STORY FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY

            And it came to pass in these days that there went out a decree from the personal laptop computers and hand-held computers and iPads and iPods and high-definition televisions and Sirius radio satellite stations that all the world should be buying gifts for Christmas in 4G.   And all went to buy gifts, every one into his/her favorite retailer, or online.

There was an old woman who lived in the world

and her eyes saw and her ears heard the decree,

but her heart refused to buy 4G.

For, you see, too many Christmases had come and gone

And the old woman’s heart had turned to stone.

The gifts she wanted couldn’t be wrapped.

They were buried in memories too deeply trapped.

But, behold, the old woman was visited by wise women this year,

And they came bearing gifts of good cheer.

Gold, frankincense and myrrh from days of old?   Not quite.

But the women followed the same bright light.

I’m a basic Bah, Humbug Christmas person and have been for years.   I’m not clinically depressed during the Holiday Season, but neither am I joyful.   I resist the pressure to shop ‘til I drop, but that isn’t limited to a particular time of the year, either.   I’m considering the possibility I may suffer from borderline Scrooge disorder or at a minimum, Holiday Harrumphs.

This year is different.   I’ve been jolted and shaken out of my cynicism and once again believe in the Magic that is Christmas.   I think my transformation actually began last year when my new neighbors in Texas on Worsham Street decorated their homes and yards with spectacular exterior holiday lighting.   They adorned trees, bushes, windows, doors, porches, benches, roofs – anything they could find to attach a string of lights – and the little street came alive with white icicle lights and plain white lights and multi-colored lights of all shapes and sizes that glowed and blinked and gave the appearance of a miniature Disneyland.   I absolutely loved them and of course, I had to participate with my own lights on our house on the street.   I felt my Christmas ice melt just a little each time I turned the switch that lit my bright lights.   This year the street is again beautiful, and I thank my neighbors for the inspiration of their lighting traditions.

I miss my family at Christmas, the family that defined Christmas for me as a child.   That family is gone as that time and place are gone, but the child inside me mourns their loss every time I hear “Silent Night” and other carols sung during this time of the year.   We were musical people and much of our holiday revolved around music in our churches where my mother was always responsible for the Christmas Cantata.   Sometimes she played the piano for it so my dad could lead the church choir and sometimes she drafted another pianist so she could lead the choir herself.   Regardless, music was the reason for the season for us and we celebrated the season in church.

Family has been re-defined in my adult life by my partner and four children in furry suits that I adore.   I have a step-son who now has a girlfriend he lives with and so our family grows together.   Through the past forty years I’ve been away from Texas I’ve been fortunate to have wonderful friends who have become closer than the DNA-linked group I left behind.   In my gay and lesbian community in South Carolina, the term “family” is a word we use to describe ourselves.   The question, “Do you think she’s family?” is translated, “Do you think she’s a lesbian like us?”   Being part of a marginalized sub-culture creates strong bonds within that environment and my friends have been simply the best.

Coming home to Texas to live has connected me once again with my DNA family and that’s been an incredible experience and part of the Magic of Christmas for me the last two years.   First cousins, second cousins, third cousins once removed and the people they’ve married and their children are good, and a few questionable, surprises for me.   Gathering for a cousins’ Christmas potluck luncheon or going with cousins to the Montgomery Annual Cookie Walk or having cousins come to our home or visiting in their homes rekindle good memories of the times when our hair wasn’t white and our figures were slimmer and the great-grandparents at the table weren’t us.  I see these relatives and I am a part of them, and I feel good to belong to them at Christmas.  Our conversations honor and celebrate our heritage and the ones who are no longer with us.   We laugh and cry together because we are moved by our memories.   My family is a Christmas gift.

But just as the familiar story goes of the Wise Men who followed a bright light to Bethlehem and brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby boy in the manger, Wise Women in my life have brought gifts that rocked my Christmas complacency.   My partner surprised me with an early gift at Thanksgiving when I went home to her in South Carolina.  It’s worth its weight in gold to me.   It’s a western saddle made of leather and rides a wooden quilt holder that a neighbor gave me when she saw the saddle.   It’s a perfect combination and looks good in my Texas den underneath a picture of a cowboy sitting on a fence.   Whenever I look at the saddle, I think of two of my favorite things: my partner who knew me well enough to buy this treasure for me and my days of riding horses as a child.  I feel the love of the giver of this perfect gift.

Frankincense was used in ancient times for medicinal and calming purposes including treatment for depression.   Burning frankincense was also thought to carry prayers to heaven by people in those days.   One of the Wise Women in my life gave me my own version of frankincense last week when she bought a plane ticket to South Carolina for me to be with my partner for Christmas.   I marvel at this generosity from a friend who surely loves me and who chased away the potential Christmas blues.   This gift came from prayers to heaven that were unasked but answered on the wings of a snow white dove called US Airways and the spirit that is the Magic of Christmas in the heart of my friend.

Myrrh is an Arabic word for bitter and it is the resin that comes from a tree that grows in the semi-desert regions of Africa and the Red Sea.   The Chinese used it for centuries to treat wounds and bruises and bleeding.   The Egyptians used myrrh as an embalming oil for their mummies.   Yesterday I received another gift that reminded me of myrrh – not the bitterness nor the embalming properties – but the unexpected present was a live blooming cactus plant that arrived at my house via a congenial UPS driver who I believe thinks he is Santa Claus.   When I opened the box and removed the moss packing per the enclosed instructions, I was stunned by the beauty of the pink blooms and the deep rich green of the plant.   The gift came from another Wise Woman who is married to my cousin in Rosenberg, Texas and was an additional reminder of the Magic that lives in Christmas.   Every day I’ll see these blooms and think of my cousins who sent them and the healing power beauty affords us when we take a moment to consider it.   I’ve always loved a Christmas cactus.

Gold, frankincense and myrrh with a 21^st century twist.   The Christmas story of Mary and Joseph’s plight in the manger in Bethlehem has been told and re-told for thousands of years.   Regardless of your belief, it is a tender tale of a family who welcomes a baby boy into a world of conflict and hardship and hopes he will somehow change it for the better.   The same conflicts continue two thousand years later and hardships of every shape and description plague our families today, but we move on.   Sometimes forward, sometimes backward.  But onward we go.   And in this spirit of hope for a better world where peace becomes the norm and hardships are made more bearable, I abandon my Bah, Humbug  with a Merry Christmas to all!

HUMPTY DUMPTY

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,

And all the King’s horses and all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

—— Old English Nursery Rhyme

            I noticed the red dried blood and purple bruising on the top of her left hand as she sat with both hands folded in the large brown leather recliner that was her assigned seat in the den and wondered what in the world had happened.   This semi-conscious frail woman with wispy uncombed snow white hair slouched down in a chair that swallowed her…with her feet up in their usual elevated position.  Her green sweat suit pants and bright flowered cotton blouse she wore today didn’t belong to her, but they were clean and looked comfortable enough.  She sat on a white pad to prevent accidents to the leather chair.  She was dozing when I came through the door and didn’t stir when I bent to kiss her unwrinkled forehead.   She looked up at me and smiled and then closed her eyes again.   My mother wasn’t interested in talking today.

            Her caregiver Kathy sat across from me on the well-worn sofa and noticed my glance at Mom’s hands.   Kathy was a tall woman and big-boned as we used to say when describing a woman her size.  She had just stepped out of the shower when I arrived for my visit and her hair was wet and pulled back from her not unattractive face.   She had a great smile and genuineness I liked.  

            “Has your mother always been a scratcher or is this something new?” she asked.   “Most of the time when we struggle to get her to take a shower she scratches Norma or me.   I’ve got a new one right here.”   She pointed to a fresh scratch on her hand.   “Yesterday Selma thought she was scratching me but instead she scratched herself so hard on her own hand she made it bleed and then pulled off the band aid I put on it.  It looks worse than it is, though.”

            The idea of my mother being a “scratcher” was like a foreign movie without subtitles.  Difficult to comprehend, yet I knew it was true.  I’d heard a nurse say the same thing in her hospital room a few weeks ago to the young aide who was to give Mom a bath in her bed.  “Be careful, she’s a scratcher,” the nurse said.   I had almost fainted.  My mother, the prim and proper little woman who taught second grade in a public school for twenty-five years and played the piano in Southern Baptist churches for more than fifty years, was a scratcher.   It’s a world gone mad.

            “No, it’s not new,” I said.   “I’m not sure how long she’s been doing it, but I know it happened at least once during her hospital stay several weeks ago.  I’m so sorry she does it to you, but I can tell you it’s completely out of character for her.”

            “Oh, no, don’t worry.  I totally understand.  We’ve seen most everything with our Alzheimer folks,” Kathy said.

            I had entrusted the care of my mother six weeks ago to the two sisters, Kathy and Norma, who lived in the country twenty-two miles from my home in Montgomery, Texas.   Their brick house was an unassuming ranch style with a beautiful swimming pool screened and covered like the ones I had seen in Florida.  This made sense when I found they grew up in the Melbourne area.  The sisters came highly recommended to me by a friend whose father lived with them for seven years before he died last year.   My friend said her family had chosen them from several options and never regretted the choice.

            Mom lived in a Memory Care Unit for the past four years in a large assisted-living residential community in southwest Houston.   The setting was relatively plush and her unit housed twenty patients.   The cost rose every year she was there and was now almost $6,000 a month for her care for moderate to severe dementia and the related deterioration of her physical capacities.  Incontinence and lack of ability to walk without a walker were major changes in her condition in recent years.   Her world was sustained by her routine and the familiar surroundings of her private small apartment that defined it.   Locked entrances and exits set her boundaries and she adjusted to this world with an acceptance bordering on relief from the necessity of trying to preserve an identity she had long forgotten.   When I visited her in the Memory Care Unit, I typically found her in good spirits and checking her watch to see what she was supposed to do next.   Was it time for a meal?  Should she be in the dining room?   Did she need to go to the living room for a movie or exercise class or Wheel of Fortune or Bingo?   Were they going out for ice cream?   Someone had a plan, and my mother loved a plan.

            God bless long-term care insurance and the benefits it provided that covered the last four years of my mother’s stay in Houston.   Unfortunately, her benefit period ended this fall and economic realities made change unavoidable.   Her move to the house in the country was an answer for one problem but generated a host of others.   On the day I drove her to her new home, the conversation was dramatic foreshadowing of the days to come.

            “Mom, don’t you think it’s beautiful to be in the country like this?” I asked her as we rode along in my pickup truck.

            “Yes, it’s beautiful all right, but I wouldn’t want to live out here,” she replied.

            Indeed, she did not go gently into that good night, as the poet Dylan Thomas described.   When we arrived at her new home, she had forgotten the hamburger and fries I’d bribed her with at lunch to improve her mood.   She reluctantly sat down in the den with her two new compatriots, Anne and Virginia.   Anne had mild to moderate dementia and was in her early eighties, I would learn later.   She was an attractive frail woman with pulmonary issues and needed frequent breathing treatments.   Virginia was eighty-nine and proud of it and was in a better mental and physical state than either Mom or Anne.   She forgot words but generally followed conversation threads and understood contexts.  She was the only one of the three women who didn’t need a walker.    I liked the two women immediately and hoped Mom would, too.

            “I don’t understand why I have to be here, and I don’t think it’s right for you to bring me  without telling me we were coming to stay,” Mom said to me when we sat down on the sofa in the den.   Anne and Virginia each sat in large recliners facing the sofa and listened to our conversation.    Lack of privacy was a new challenge in the intimate den, I thought.

            “Well, they did the same thing to me,” Anne said to Mom.   “My daughter Beverly and her husband just brought me in here one day and left.”

            “Me, too,” Virginia chimed in.   “But I like it now and I’m glad you’re moving in.   You can have the other big chair.   I hope we don’t get anybody else because we only have three big chairs.”

            And so began the next chapter in my mother’s battle with the devils of her own mind and body.   Within ten days, as we began the process of changing to local doctors and pharmacies for her medications, she developed a severe urinary tract infection, which is not uncommon for women of her age and physical state.   But she required treatment in the community hospital for a week and after I brought her home from that stay, she hasn’t been the same.   She says little and doesn’t eat solid food.   The sisters feed her a liquid diet through a contraption that looks like an oversized eye dropper to me.   She’s had company in the hospital and in her new home – visits from nephews, cousins, other family members and even a visit from her former pastor.   She greets everyone with a smile and says a practiced thank you for coming.  The level of recognition appears to be distant with no connection to the present. 

            Her main question for me in the hospital as she lay attached to tubes of all sorts day after day was, “How long are you going to be in the hospital?  I didn’t know you were sick.”   I told her I didn’t know how long but I was glad she was there with me.    

            Did she have the uti before she moved?   Probably.   Would she have been so sick if she hadn’t moved?  Maybe not.  The mind and body work strangely in tandem, I’ve observed, and my mother is seemingly lost without her old planned life in the Memory Care Unit.   Hopefully, time will allow her to find a new routine that will offer her the comfort of consistency.   Her world is like the world of Humpty Dumpty, however.   All the King’s horses and all the King’s men won’t be able to put Humpty together again as he once was.  The fall has been too great.