Revenge of the Zucchini

After a full work weekend, my friend Nancy asked me what I was going to now do for fun.

“Blanche and freeze zucchini,” I answered.

“Whoo-hoo!” she responded, laughing.

I don’t feel like I have a choice. They’re pummeling me every time I walk through the garden, pulsing out of the plants night and day. I can’t keep up with them. I’ll pick a batch one evening, and the next morning Bill tells me he sees more ready to be harvested. I’ve become a slave to my zucchini plants.

This summer started off cool and then the rains began, continuing every afternoon. Great, I thought, until I started noticing the plants remaining small, apparently missing their regular dose of sunshine.

For example, I still don’t have eggplants. By now we’ve usually been grilling those every evening and happily mixing them with zucchini for ratatouille. Even our varieties of pepper plants are only just now becoming ready to harvest, hopefully to soon take salsa-making off the hold list.


And the tomatoes, finally, are turning. I’ve come to expect this in Colorado, clumps of fat, green tomatoes on the vine for weeks, slowly dispelling my memories of juicy, red ones ready in Texas in early July at the latest.

But here, fresh lettuce and sweet strawberries whet our appetite early, and then the lull stretches out as we wait for any more garden goodies, and this year it’s been one long lull.

The zucchini, however, sneaked up on us. One day the tiny plants were sitting unobtrusively on their mounds and the next day I swear the leaves were like patio umbrellas and the zucchini as big as baseball bats. Walking through the garden feels a bit treacherous, with scenes from a potential horror flic “The Revenge of the Zucchini” popping up in my head.


So we stuff these babies, steam them, fry a few (including the blossoms), and bake it in bread and quiche, and I could still use some different recipes (got any?). Last year we got a small freezer, so we’re taking the time to “put some up” as my granny used to say, blanching and freezing. This is hard work even with a food processor to slice them up before dipping them in the boiling water and then scooping the pieces out to toss in a sink full of ice water. The assembly line starts in the garden with the plants rolling out the produce, eventually ending in the oven when something delicious has been created. Often I must remind myself something tasty will come out of all the labor.

Bill thought he’d improve the freezing process this year and avoid the freezer burn we noticed from last year’s crop, so he bought a machine that vacuums and seals bags. Only after two long evenings of blanching and bagging we still haven’t been successful at getting the darn thing to seal our piles of veggies, feeling like further evidence of revenge of the zucchini.


Like with everything else, I remind myself to stop, take a deep breath, and alter my perspective. The zucchini is not out to get me. My garden, of course, is doing just what I want it to do, produce! What a lovely opportunity the garden always provides to give fresh veggies away. And best of all, even if we’re struggling with some new cantankerous kitchen gadget, the times when Bill and I are bumping around together in the kitchen often turn into some of our favorite memories and good laughs for long winter evenings when we reminisce about last summer’s garden.

Unrehearsed Adventures

With mountain ranges all along the periphery, it’s as though the entire San Luis valley in southern Colorado exists just to hold the huge mass of air that has slid down the slopes of the various mountain ranges that comprise its edges. Add to that big bowl of oxygen chunks of people’s lives, with a few lost and realized dreams sprinkled on top, and there you have it - a real life place swirling with heartfelt stories. I recently added a few of my own to the mix.

My Houston friend and colleague, Sharon Fabriz, and I decided to create a day’s writing experience for each other during my valley visit in early July. In the mid 90s we led reflective journaling workshops together for Houston teachers, and since that time we have each continued to expand upon reflective writing experiences for teachers in Houston and Denver. Sharon and her life-partner, Pat, have built a cabin about 30 minutes from Graceland (our trailer and land), so we decided to spend a full day writing at each of our places.

Like much of Colorado and New Mexico this year, the San Luis Valley is lush with wildflowers and running streams. Most afternoons a storm blows in, filling the vast skies with occasional rains while flippant winds toss dusky clouds above the valley’s bowl. All the while we continued to write, slipping into warmer jackets when the sun dipped behind clouds, and reading to each other over tasty picnic spreads.

One of our writing activities was to compose a timeline of our lives. We discussed landmarks to note as we surveyed our years lived, stopped to write or tell stories that helped us both remember experiences and envision our futures. Like the quote from a book I just read (Sonata for Miriam), “Good or bad, our past is the reference we need to enable the future.” I figure I need all the help I can get, especially after taking a close look at this timeline of where I’ve been in the past 57 years.

We took old continuous feed computer paper and began stretching out our lives, year by year. After the years were marked down on paper, we discovered it wasn’t necessarily a linear activity, for memories unexpectedly popped up here and there in revealing though haphazard ways. It was more like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle without having a picture on the box to guide us. Stories surfaced while we wrote and took intermittent hikes, even churning in dreams during sleep, prompting sketchy recollections that often turned into vivid details.

It was as if I were taking the building stones of my life and organically placing them over a lifespan where they each belonged, resulting in a long picture of where I’ve been, what I’ve done and learned, with occasional glimpses of how and why I’ve become who I am.

Several days later another close friend, Nancy Fisher, drove over from Durango and we drove south to Taos to visit former Austin friends/soccer and college colleagues, Mary Humphrey and Connie Ode. Here were three remarkable women whom I’ve known for over 30 years. After a day of hiking, Mary dug up an old slide projector and we watched slides of a backpacking trip we took in September of 1974, all of us with our long blonde hair, thick wool socks, and huge heavy packs. Never was there a hat on our heads to protect our sunburned faces, though we had zinc oxide slathered on our noses in several slides. We looked so very young, and surprisingly strong. Twenty-two years old and traipsing across Colorado wilderness with confidence and curiosity, dreams of the future piling up in front of us, but not a water lawyer, ICU nurse or public school teacher yet among us. My timeline was pretty short at this point in life, and little did I know that I would be noting this trip on one 35 years later. We remarked that we most likely wouldn’t be watching the digital pictures of that day’s mountain stream hike either in another 35 years. Possible, but not likely, with the time stretching before us offering a much shorter span of life than what now lies behind us.

But future there is, don’t get me wrong, and stopping and taking a close look at the past seems to help me create a vision for the unknown time that lies ahead. I turn 57 this week, and I feel damn lucky considering a few of the observations from constructing my timeline. Maybe you’ll consider a bit of your life’s journey and share with me or others some of your own discoveries. After all, if you are reading this, it looks like we’re in for some part of this unrehearsed adventure together.

1. I’ve lived in 36 homes in 3 countries and 4 states
2. Lived in rural areas as a child for 10.5 years, and as an adult for 9 years
3. Traveled to 11 countries
4. Have had 13 transformative travel experiences: 3 in France, 2 in Mexico, 1 in Canada, and 7 in the Southwest
5. Had 11 dogs
6. Gone to 11 schools (K-university)
7. Learned 3 languages and still speak 2
8. Had at least 36 jobs from ages 13-present
9. Worked as a camp counselor at 5 children’s camps before directing an adult fitness camp, for a total of 10 summers
10. Have learned to do 8 outdoor activities well, though I’ve continued to do barely half of them
11. Taught at 8 schools with a total of 13 principals
12. 4 hospitalizations
13. Known Bill 28 years, married for 15 and counting
14. Knew Steve (1st husband) 13 years and married for 3
15. 10 so called “serious” relationships, but now only in touch with Bill
16. About 20 friend relationships, sprinkled from age 13 on, that at this point I believe I’ll know the rest of my life (including a stepson and his wife)
17. lost 2 friends to suicide, 1 murdered, 1 with AIDS, 1 to cancer, 1 to heartache
18. Came into my teens in the mid-60s right after JFK’s assassination, with RFK & MLK following within years just before graduating from HS at 17 yo
19. I was 9 when my first sister graduated from HS and 14 with the second
20. I lived alone with my parents for almost 4 years after my sisters left
21. Spent HS & college watching and listening to Viet Nam and my 50s with the turmoil of Iraq
22. Apparently the southwest is powerful for me, having found times and places for solitary and/or empowering retreats here more than any place else I’ve been. Guess this is why it’s home.

Ancestral Dirt

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Just after passing through a tunnel of trees called “Black Hollow” (pronounced “Black Halla” here in north Texas), my great uncle Doug announced that we would soon have a “bird’s eye view of Marysville.” I smiled hearing the name of my blog (unknown to my uncle), and also in anticipation of revisiting the grounds of my ancestors. Our journey through the thick wooded area where the swells of the earth dip down for creeks to merge no longer holds the likelihood of robbers like it did decades ago. Carriages, wagons, and ponies were hustled through dusk’s shadows and the low light of the woods in hopes of an uneventful and safe journey as early Marysville settlers scurried home.

These days one can’t really call Marysville a town, despite the mesmerizing turn of wind turbines stretched across the horizon or the cattle grazing around an occasional hidden homestead. Unlike much of the sandy north Texas area where my parents and sisters now live, there are no horse ranches in these parts due to the sticky soil that presents problems in a horse’s hooves.

But the population of the area was first affected in 1942 when the U.S. army decided to take over thousands and thousands of acres of this north Texas area and create a massive, military training ground for troops being prepared for combat in WW II. (Not my navy Dad though, who survived many a battle aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Note his beloved hat in photo below.) Marysville families had no choice but to sell their homes and land for unreasonable sums and relocate. This included my maternal grandmother and grandfather’s families. Hundreds of homesteads were demolished as a large hospital and acres of barracks went up. Somehow the old Davison (my grandfather’s ancestors) home, the school house, Baptist church, and remains of the general store all held their ground, and of course the Marysville cemetery, which feels like the real sacred hub.

The fierce thunderstorms of the morning and early hours of this June afternoon made for sweltering Texas temperatures. My mid-eighties parents struggled through the high grass and uneven terrain of the cemetery, but they were up to the challenge of this visit. My great niece, Megan, proved an incredible sport for an 11 year old with five adults ages 56 to 86. Great Uncle Doug’s enthusiasm for sharing intricate and endless details of our family’s genealogy could test the endurance of even the best among us.
Until the second world war, my grandparents’ families were apparently quite content to be farming corn and cotton in that sticky north Texas dirt. Johana and John Davison had traveled clear from Georgia in the mid 1800’s, and later their son Luddie Pinkney (no kiddin’), a Baptist preacher, married Mattie Francis and soon begot Chester Bernice in 1896, my granddaddy. Luddie must have decided that changing Davison to Davidson would make up for his questionable middle name. Mattie’s parents (one being a Jim Crow, hopefully not a lawmaker) descended from Jane and Steven Crow, who also took westward to Marysville, journeying from Mississippi and South Carolina in the early 1800s.

Meanwhile Joseph Forrest Fletcher roamed in to Marysville from Missouri, while Emma Gertrude Vanderford trickled down from Springfield, Illinois, and the two of them hooked up and viola, Emma Clare, my granny. Come her early twenties with her commendable eighth grade education, Emma Clare was the perfect candidate to become the Marysville school marm, soon catching the eye of my future grand daddy, Chester Bernice, who was working the fields at the time. They married in 1917.

So Marysville holds many of the graves and a lot of memories of my maternal grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents. Whew. Now my parents and sisters are living less than an hour away from this place. See why I called this a sort of sacred hub? I mean, there was some covered wagon traveling that happened for all those people to even make it here from the deep south and the Midwest to Marysville, but the road seemed to finally stop just past Black Hollow. Maybe they all experienced the fear of God amidst those dark forests and chose to shout hallelujah and stake their claims in the fertile soils once making it through the hollow’s ominous shadows and the tricky sands of the Red River.

I don’t know why it fascinates me so to meander through a cemetery holding the gravestones of ancestors. My legs were itchin’ and bugs were sticking in the sweat running down my neck. But I recognized the flowers poking up among the engraved old fashioned names and when I closed my eyes I could tell I was in Texas just by the bird calls. I spent only one lone sabbatical year in this area amidst 42 years I lived in Texas (well, I was born not too far from here, moving away at age 3), but I get a sense of the root of the root of the root of who I am around here. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about wanting to live in this neck of the woods again; I’m planted oh so happily in Colorado. But connecting to a sense of place in one area seems to help me feel more in touch with this blessed earth wherever I am, whether in my garden in Denver, roaming the rocky trails in the San Luis Valley, or walking on the dirt of my ancestors. It’s all home, baby.

(Photos: 3rd is old Davison homestead; 4th is old school house; 5th is my parents Rosalie and Joe, me, sister Pamela, and her granddaughter Megan; 6th is Luddie and Mattie with their children, oldest being my granddaddy; the rest are old family gravestones)

Colorado Cruisers

“Roar, roar, roar!” Gavroche was in killer stance, hair standing up on his back, looking pretty fierce for all his 16 pounds of testosterone. His barks bounced across Rocky Mountain Lake landing on four American White Pelicans. They were huge.

“Whoa, Gavy, that’s something to bark about!” The birds were easily twice his size. He looked up at me, proudly protective, a snarl still posed on his lips.

The pelicans floated like massive multi-deck cruiser ships. They appeared to have a plan, closing in on shallow water fish where they could scoop them into large pocketed bills, amazingly able to hold almost three gallons of water, point the bills down to drain excess water, then tilt their heads back for a long, extended swallow.

Coots and cormorants milled about, gabbling and squawking about who knows what while the pelicans silently controlled the waters. The low rider cormorants skulked along with sleek black backs barely visible on the water’s surface, necks poking up like submarine periscopes. In contrast the coots (who resemble ducks but aren’t) pumped chicken-like heads on top of their short, fat necks, occasionally prompting the pelicans to flash their nine-foot wingspans and send the coots bob-bob-bobbing along.

By then I had managed to get my pocket digital camera out and wedge the two extend-a-leashes between my knees. Holding the camera at arm’s length I tried to fit the scene I had been observing into the elusive viewfinder, but the sun’s glare and my precarious hold on the leashes had me teetering at the water’s edge. A mallard couple splashed out of winter’s smashed cattail reeds and the dogs lunged. Let me tell you, it wasn’t a graceful sight. I managed to stay afoot, not drop the camera, and most important, grab the leashes, but I’m pretty sure I looked like a windmill in a hurricane. The pelicans, who had been quite tolerant of us only moments before, cautiously navigated toward deeper waters. With slow flapping outstretched wings, one even heaved itself into the sky. I swear I felt the air shift.

I sank back into a dazed stare as the dogs settled down. The remaining three floated on in unison as if doing some kind of dance, occasionally making exaggerated head movements that I later learned are the way they keep their under-the-bill pouches elastic and supple for the next fish roundup. A fishing lure tangled in the nearby reeds caught my eye, along with a floating plastic bottle and a crumpled potato chip bag. Nearby another walker called to her young Labrador, off-leash and crashing gleefully into the reeds. I thought of how pelicans are another species in decline, mostly as a result of general human disturbance along with diminishing wetlands and generous use of pesticides. Once again I reminded a fellow dog owner of nesting season at the lake, and the necessity of the leash laws. She acted genuinely surprised about leash laws and the existence of birdlife on the lake, glancing around as if looking for proof of feathered creatures.

Last year warm temperatures fooled hundreds of pelicans, convincing them to hang out in the north two months longer than normal. When their internal alarm clocks finally pushed them to fly south, they bumped into paralyzing winter storms leaving many frostbitten, ill, and extremely disoriented. Believe me, this did not make major headlines. Most readers, like the dog owner above, are generally not interested in birds, for God’s sake, or the fact that more than 10,000 pelicans spend the summer here in Colorado, nesting, lounging around, and resting up for the next long haul south. I looked up to see the fourth big bird soaring overhead. I wondered what a baby pelican looks like and wished I could show one to the off-leash Labrador’s owner, hoping that might convince her to pay closer attention.

Get A Grip

Gardening gets me in its grip around this time of year. To even make it to my car I have to walk through a gate and into the garden to reach our garage. Even the sound of the gate latching sets off pictures of all that has filled this sacred space for two growing seasons and what I’m envisioning for the coming summer: towering cosmos flowers, juicy peppers, plump eggplants, shiny red tomatoes, sneaky squash, flavorful lettuce, basil, chives, herbs, cucumbers. Ok, I’ll stop or it turns into a planning session as I try to decide how I’ll rotate plants and what would do best where.

Both sets of my grandparents cultivated the earth. Trailing my granddaddy in his garden outside of Ft. Worth, I remember how he would make holes with his cane, drop in a seed without so much as bending over, then cover it up with his foot. Even my parents turned a quarter of our west Texas backyard into a thriving garden. Before my mid-twenties, I was shoveling dirt for my first garden in Austin. And when Bill and I moved west of Austin to rural Spicewood, we soon had a flourishing garden beneath a busy Martin birdhouse.

Eyeing the Navajo Street home for purchase, we weren’t discouraged to see a backyard covered in rock. No problem, we thought; we’ll just scrape up the rocks and soon have a garden. But beneath the debris we found a solid, concrete drive, apparently the perfect place to overhaul old cars. Hire some muscle with a jack-hammer, and the soil will appear. It wasn’t as painless as it sounds, and more than one set of muscles was involved, but within two years a remarkable garden was growing and a freezer full to the brim as a result.

After plenty of chitchats about manure, a good neighbor friend, Kathy, and I headed out to shovel llama poop a couple of weeks ago. An ad on Craig’s list prompted the outing: $5 for all you can shovel. We googled llama manure and discovered all its beauty: you can work it right into the soil or even put it on top of plants and it won’t burn up anything, it’s high in nitrogen but lower in organic matter than most other barnyard manures (when organic matter decomposes it produces the heat that can damage plants), and it can improve soil texture due to strong water-holding capacity. With visions of llama beans dancing in our heads, we threw our shovels in the back of a QKS van and headed south of Denver to Deer Creek Canyon.

We filled garbage bag after garbage bag, cheerfully heaving them up into the van after quickly learning not to fill the bags to capacity. Temperatures were cooler in the canyon, but quite predictably we were plenty warm in no time. Working with Kathy was a pleasure; stopping ever so often she had a way of remembering a story and threading along while muscles calmed down and were rejuvenated. Once the van was full, we decided to go thank a few of the peculiar looking animals who had delivered the product of our labor. Up close to a mama and baby llama, we were charmed to have a furry, smiley snout shoved into our hands. Those eyes alone were enough to justify considering a llama for a pet.

Back in our hood, we unloaded bag after bag, swept out the van, and called it a day. Or so I wish. Well, you know how the days are longer now, and my garden was right there and smack in the middle of it was a pile of manure better off in the soil than stinking up our walkway. I figured I’d just loosen up the soil a bit and maybe work in one bag. Ahhh, the soil was so soft, and taunting weeds deserved removal. Sure can’t fertilize those suckers or let them spread! One quadrant shoveled and manure spread, let’s see, think I’ll transplant these newly sprouting strawberries over there, but I need to pull the weeds in that area first and loosen that soil, and gee, I’ve had it with these dominating, spreading mint plants so let me pull up as many roots as I can (my god, where do these things stop??), and I might as well open another bag of llama beans to spread on this other quadrant, and are these more strawberries in the center flower patch? Well, don’t need ‘em here, especially if I’m going to (and I might as well) spread some manure on the flowers and looky here, the oregano is greening so let me trim it up so it can take off and oh, let me open one more bag of beans for this quadrant and why don’t I move some of these chives, which are about to bloom after all, to the front of the house because really three batches are enough back here and. . . ouch. . . oh, god, my back really hurts! What in the world was I thinking? Was I thinking?? How old do I think I am anyway??? What’s so wrong with the seven days for creation idea?

I limped into the house where Bill was ready with a pain-killing glass of wine. He had arrived home a bit earlier, shaking his head knowingly as he traipsed back and forth from car to house carrying in groceries. “Darlin’, you don’t have to do it all in one day, you know.” Too late. This is a familiar character trait that has gotten me in trouble plenty in my life. Apparently what I haven’t learned well is the “being fully in the moment” with the “slow way down and just take it easy” because “there’s plenty of time for everything under the sun.” There’s time for everything? Yes, just like the miracle of growth that seemingly happens in no time at all amidst a jungle of flowers and vegetables and fruits, the garden can be prepared and planted and nurtured in one long, slow, leisurely dance if I can just get a grip, before it gets a grip on me. No lingering, laid-back dances for me the last two weeks; every move of mine has come with a wince.

For the Love of a Sister

(Paula (oldest), Pamela, Patricia (youngest), Pamela as senior in high school

My middle sister, Pamela, definitely didn’t have to beg hard to get a lock on her bedroom door when we were growing up. Mom wasn’t even entirely aware of the full extent of the spying campaign I conducted on the only older sister left at home. Almost four years younger, I had a lot of time on my hands and couldn’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing than undercover work on this sister: sneaking into her closet to watch her practice singing for some contest, slipping under her bed to eavesdrop on phone calls, reading her journals that she had carefully hidden from my eager eyes, waiting quietly in the bushes for her to return from a date so that I could watch a possible kiss, and even hiding in that little dip in back of her boyfriend’s VW when they went out on a date.

Pamela’s patience with me has been building for a long time, despite my early antagonistic behaviors. She listened compassionately to my angst when for my first homecoming football game in the seventh grade I was mortified to only receive a mum from Corky, the retarded boy down the street, and not from the boy I was interested in or, as was tradition, from my ‘Big Sis’ at school (someone in the ninth grade that ‘watched’ over me to help me adjust to Junior High School). Those large, smelly corsages, with the year and the school’s initials glittered on them, had silk streamers that floated all the way down to the hem of one’s dress. At thirteen years old this was a big deal in our very west Texas town of Abilene. I couldn’t not wear the mum from Corky, who I always made an effort to be nice to despite my peers teasing him mercilessly. Neither was I mature enough yet to wear the big, sparkly flower and say with ease who it was from. Wiser with her almost sixteen years, Pamela tried to help me see what was right in this situation as I sobbed in confused distress.

Mom was still at work selling lingerie at Grishom’s department store in town. Paula, our oldest sister, was away at college. Dad was in another state as a North American Moving Van Line driver, and the car he drove when home sat idle in the driveway. Oblivious in my grief, Pamela called a florist, found the car keys and slipped out to drive, illegally since she didn’t have a license yet, to go pick up a mum she had ordered for me. It must have been hard for mom to get mad at Pamela for her thoughtful intentions when she found out, as she had to since Pamela backed into another car on this quest. Touched by the gesture of my real big sis, I headed off to the game much more comfortable now with a gaudy mum on each side of my jacket.

In the middle of the eighth grade, and Pamela’s junior year, we moved to Richardson, just north of Dallas. Pamela had her driver’s license now and carted me around plenty in her own little VW bug. She even kept it a secret after realizing I had taken her car out one Valentine’s school day (this time I was the one without the license) when home sick I decided to drive around and deliver my valentine cards directly to friends’ mailboxes. Another time she agreed to ‘a wake-up party’ where we arranged with my friends’ parents that Pamela would drive me to their homes early on a Saturday morning and I would drag my sleepy girlfriends out of bed, one by one, eventually arriving at our house for breakfast, everyone in hair rollers and pajamas.

Older for Pamela’s biggest beauty pageant, I now admired the courage and discipline of my big sis as she prepared for the final night. I slipped a note of support in her bag amidst the swimsuit, heels, hairspray, and evening gown paraphernalia all potential beauty queens pack for the actual pageant. Now, edgy with anticipation while sitting in the audience with my mother, Pamela had been selected as one of the finalists and it was her turn to answer a question from the judges. Based on my sketchy memory, it went something like this: “We’ve heard you have a little sister who has been carefully watching you during pageant preparations. If you had one piece of advice to give your younger sister, what would it be?”

I’m pretty sure Pamela hadn’t expected or prepared for this question. And forgiving as she was, she didn’t focus on my earlier years of terrorism and how developing other pastimes could have benefited me much more. After a long pause, she instead quoted a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

I don’t remember word for word what she said next, but listening with utmost tenderness and care I came away remembering something along the following lines which, in my book, should have won her the pageant crown and not just first runner-up and Miss Congeniality:
“Finding out what is true for ourselves takes time. If we’re brave enough to explore who we are and risk being vulnerable, we get to know our weaknesses as well as our strengths. And learning to be honest with ourselves and others helps us to love ourselves more, even with all our imperfections, and also others. Living a life that is truthful can be an expression of love.” Unlike her sneaky, social, and often selfish little sister, Pamela was modeling an internal exploration, earnest to discover what would hold the most meaning in life and doing her best to encourage me take a look inward as well.

About a year later Pamela and Jimmy got married, and she let me have my high school boyfriend over for a romantic dinner for two in their home. Clinking their new crystal glasses like we’d seen them do in the movies, the glasses shattered on top of the meal Pamela had helped me prepare for this special evening. Years passed, and the crystal came out again as Pamela prepared an after wedding dinner for this same boyfriend and me, doing her best to steer us toward something more traditional that included family in our haphazard, hippy wedding plans.

In the interim of using the crystal glasses, Pamela was dismayed when I approached her at 19 years old, the summer after my first year in college, subsequent to learning I was over two months pregnant. At the time, Pamela was eight months pregnant with her first child. I had already made arrangements for an abortion, illegal in 1971, and I was terrified. All I could think about was how difficult it had been for me to get into the University of Texas and navigate the grants, loans, and work-study that would help me pay for college, and how having a baby would most likely cause this to come to a screeching halt. Pamela listened to all this and sensing my stubborn determination, agreed to drive me to the abortion and then let me stay with her afterwards, despite her firm opposition to my decision.

The entire experience was as bad as you may have heard from descriptions of illegal abortions: back room, coat hanger, painful, the hemorrhaging that followed. Pamela sat up with me the night and day afterwards as I bled and cried. I think Jimmy was out of town and I remember feeling like I would kill myself if she told or called anyone else, and knowing how hard-headed I was, she obviously decided the best thing she could do was to love me through this awful ordeal I had imposed on her.

Pamela birthed Jason several weeks later and adopted three other children during the decades that followed. Loving her family in the way that she loved me that terrible summer has been an intention of mine, whether it has been her own children or the children of her children. You see, in a way I feel I owe my life to this sister, who stuck by my side and helped me hold tentatively onto the coat tails of life, even when I knew she regretted some of the choices I was making.

Our choices have diverged in other ways since that experience, and as adults we’ve butted heads and stood our ground plenty of times. But I’ve always felt my sister’s love, whether through some beautiful calligraphy she has made me, our singing together at Bill’s and my first wedding, or her arranging a place for me to stay during a healing sabbatical year. Now, after we have moved our parents closer to her and my other older sister, Pamela handles the multiplicity of details involved in the care of the aging, never voicing resentment of my living thousands of miles away during this crucial time.

Pamela is going on a ‘HeartQuest’ in the coming week and Jimmy has asked for letters of encouragement from family members and close friends that would let her know how loved she is. My words of love about this older sister are long overdue, but if they touch her heart in any way while she quests on, then I’ll consider it a prayer answered, something else she has often gifted me with and taught me to value. And Pamela, you were right, living life truthfully is an incredible expression of love.

One Shoe Squeaking

( started on 3/14/09)
The mountains were socked in all day yesterday, from Cuchara Pass all the way into the San Luis Valley. When I arrived at Graceland, our little trailer on the slope overlooking this valley, I had a clear view 50 miles to New Mexico, but behind me Mount Blanca and its neighbors were all gauzy white.

My steady canine hiking companion, Amber Grace, and I took off for a stroll. Something about low-hanging clouds made the noises seem louder; each sound seemed separate from the other, very distinct and slightly amplified. Mountain bluebirds flitted about and twittered to us as we descended the slope. The neighing of horses down on the flats floated up our way. And my left boot squeaked so loudly it sounded like a squawk.

I bought these Ariat barnyard boots in November, calling stores all over Denver and Boulder until I found my size. They zip up on the sides, cover my ankles, and provide such support that I’m reluctant to take them off. My feet feel like they’ve found their proper home to such an extent that I’ve been wearing these babies to work, for city walks, and even mountain hikes. But one shoe squeaks. I’ve never had a shoe squeak before, and I’m clueless as to why it does or what in the world to do about it. Walking down silent, empty corridors in the schools where I am to observe a teacher candidate's classroom, my shoe announces my presence before I even get there. Children turn to look, wondering what the ‘creeeak-creeeak’ sound is, perhaps imagining a wooden leg beneath my slacks.

I’ve conditioned the leather, but this is something in the inner sole. Ok, now I’m wondering if there is a message for me in this experience. My soul is squeaking?? And if one pair of squeaking shoes is not enough, a second pair of shoes, some Merrill clogs that I bought at a big Title Nine sale at the end of last summer, starting squeaking about a month ago. Once home, when I finally coerce my feet out of my Ariats, I slip on my Merrills, but with no relief from the sound of one shoe squeaking, except that it’s the opposite foot. With the Merrills my right shoe has decided to speak up.

Back to Graceland. On my second morning there I was up at 4:30AM for two reasons: I wanted to get to the Monte Vista Refuge by the crack of dawn to catch sight of the migrating sand hill cranes, and I was tired of listening to the mice in my trailer. A chilling 14 degrees hit me as I emerged from my down comforter to hastily crank up the oven and turn on the little pro-cat heater. Coffeed up, I stepped out of the trailer into the light of a bazillion stars to go warm up my frost covered car. The sound of my shoe squeaking echoed in the crisp air, possibly alerting the coyotes who began a series of yips, yaps, and yowls prompting Amber to tuck her tail and rush to the car.


After picking up a valley friend, Lynn, in Alamosa we found our way to the back roads of the refuge by sun-up. A blanket of diamond hoarfrost covered the fields. In the areas where there was standing water, a fine mist rose up to meet the morning light and create a breathtaking glow. The cranes were luminous, standing four feet tall with their long legs and long necks, leaping several feet skyward as part of their elaborate courtship dance. Six foot wingspans with feathered fingertips swished through the air amidst the raucous calls of thousands and thousands of sand hill cranes that echoed across the valley. When we got out of the car we were immediately struck by a consistent croaking, crowing rattle. It took a few seconds to realize that those guttural sounds resulted from field upon field of flocks of cranes. Thankfully this was an environment where the sound of a squeaky shoe couldn’t be heard.

Arriving back at the trailer later that morning, I froze on getting out of my car and hearing a squawk. Lynn told me the cranes sometimes lounge in the fields in front of my trailer. I reached for my binoculars then slowly began walking toward the open view, when the regularity of the sound reminded me of my shoe. Oh well, if the sound of one shoe squawking can bring to mind the majesty of a sand hill crane, surely I can find something Zen in that.