Angel Wheeler

Really, Mom?

My baby’s got hats. She’s got a lot of hats. I am nuts for a knitted hat. Or crocheted, since I don’t really know the difference.

But my baby’s also got problems. Her head is small and her hats are big.

So while I’m waiting for her head to grow, I thought we’d try out a headband. I’m not crazy about headbands, but decided she needed a different look rather than just her bare head.

This is what we got.

I don’t know, but there’s something vaguely familiar about those feathers on her head.

Oh, I know. She kind of reminds me of one of these, only pink.

Studio_WSilkie_1005_L — image courtesy of mypetchicken.com

Except of course, my baby girl is much cuter.

So, instead of toting her around looking like a white silkie rooster, I’ve decided we’ll wait for her to grow into her hats.
(and the whole world nods in agreement and sighs in relief)

Small Miracles

So why did the chicken cross the road?

To get back home from her Mexican vacation, that’s why.

Yes, it’s a small miracle, but I’ll take it. My missing yellow chicken that I wrote about in this post here, has returned safely.

I don’t know where she’s been, I only know that she’s home. She was lost, but now she’s found. The prodigal hen has come to her senses and returned to her chickie mama. And there was great rejoicing. And a small bit of befuddlement as to where this yellow bird has been the past couple of weeks.

I have a sneaking suspicion that she’s gone broody in a place I haven’t discovered yet. A broody chicken is a good mama chicken. More than anything, she desires to sit on a nest of eggs and hatch them, fertilized or not. A broody hen gets a little cranky if you try to get her eggs from the nest, she may growl (imagine that) or peck you. Sometimes a broody hen will not even leave the nest to eat or drink.

From past experience, we have found 8-10 eggs lain here or there. One time, we discovered a nest up on the stacked hay bales. Another time, some kids discovered a nest out by some big round bales of hay while out playing around the place. So, if I was a betting woman, I’d put some money down that the yellow hen has spent many days sitting on a nest of eggs somewhere around this Chicken Ranch, hoping beyond hope to hatch a few little chicks, knitting her pink and blue baby blankets……. all for naught.

Or she’s been vacationing in Mexico. Anything’s possible, right?

In Memory of My Dad #42—Neighbors

“Wish I could move my family, live up on Highway 10, where the beavers chew on sycamores and the neighbors are your friends.” Highway 10 by Dan Garber

Once upon a time here in the wooded hills of Eastern Oklahoma the word neighbor had special meaning. But that was before the days of moon shots and divided highways. Before speed became of the essence and everyone was in a hurry to make it to the local discount store. Before Tahlequah became a Mecca for canoeists and rafters, and highway 10 wasn’t as dangerous as an impact area.

Your neighbor was a strange duck, and they all seemed to be cut from the same bolt of cloth. He not only came by with his help when some catastrophe struck, but he also showed up to help with the celebration of any event that you deemed important. He would sit in church with you listening to the message, or he could pull a cork with you with equal aplomb.

He came by during the long evenings of summer and gossiped with your parents about the going on’s in the community of which we all were a part, while his kids chased lightning bugs and dodged bull bats with you in the long shadows.

If you took sick, your neighbor could always find time from his own busy schedule of hoeing corn or the many chores that go with living on a farm to check on your health. If your sickness lingered, your neighbor also took his turn sitting up with the patient, giving medicines and plenty of TLC. He was a good guy, your neighbor.

If your family suffered a death, your neighbor didn’t just come by with the usual flowers and the old “call me if you need me” before hurrying off on a sojourn of his own. He helped prepare the body for burial, opened and closed the grave and generally made himself handy around the place. He was also the first if called upon to heap praises on the newly departed, even if it was only a “I’ll say this for old Claude, he was a good ol’ boy.”

The neighbor showed up early on the chilly mornings during hog killing time. He had with him his favorite butcher knife and whetstone and he knew just how hot the water should be to ensure you a good scald. He could trim hams and shoulders, and he could look at a hog and tell you how much meat you would have that winter.

Your neighbor didn’t count his visits nor did he wait for an invitation to dinner. Many times I’ve been sent out to catch a couple of fryers just because the neighboring family showed up. While I was chasing fryers, Mama was going through her canned goods, looking for that jar of green beans that was so pretty or that half-pint of strawberry jam that had that special clarity. Now it seems that if we have unexpected company, we head for the Colonel’s for a bucket of his extra crispy.

If your house was destroyed by fire, as ours was back in ’53, nobody asked about insurance, there wasn’t any. Neighbors just went quietly about the community gathering clothing for five growing kids without the benefit of any money changing hands.

Sunday was sort of a Roman Holiday at the community of Briggs back during the 50’s. The grown ups sat and talked while the littler children played about their feet. The bigger boys flirted with the older girls while some of us might have sneaked off to take a swim in our birthday suits, flashing and frolicking like young seals in our exuberance.

Today we don’t wait for our neighbors to come for a visit. In fact, many of us leave the house in fear that very thing might happen.
We hurry through the day to get on the road ahead of traffic to go nowhere and to do nothing when we get there. We join a caravan of cars, cussing and calling the other drivers imbeciles for slowing down the traffic in our lane. We hermetically seal ourselves in our own vehicles, insulated and air conditioned against our neighbors while the latest tunes waft from our stereos. Nobody comes aborrowin’ anymore. No one can find the time from the everyday rush to sit a spell and whittle. Night time finds us down at Ned’s where we might find escape from the misery that is eating us alive, or we sit and stare at the boob tube.

We don’t have hog killings anymore because we find it simpler to drive down to the supermarket. The discount center is a short drive away so we don’t borrow a cup of sugar anymore and not many people even know what a framing square is, so there’s no reason to borrow one of those from your neighbor.

If things get too tough we can take a valium and make another appointment with the shrink.
The thought makes me sad that we don’t need neighbors anymore, because we all need to be needed.

Written by R.L. Briggs on July 20, 1996

In Memory of My Dad #41—All About August

The last week of July was uncommonly cool, but we’ll still have the fragrance ridden nights that are filled with the smell of honeysuckle. Nothing stirs the memory for me quite like the odor of honeysuckle and lilac.

I recall crushed and faded flowers in the old family Bible, maybe alongside a curl clipped from the head of a loved one. And, the old Sycamore tree that has my initials, with hers, carved into the bark. That old tree is still standing. How many families of hawks have lived there in its lofty branches? How many times has the old tree heard the raucous cawing of crows or the first chatter of a fox squirrel’s young during the passing years?

July is a fine time to go about cherishing all your favorite memories so as to build a cushion for your coming old age. Now here comes August with her full, lazy, warm days and star-studded nights, filled with the rasping of the Cicadas. August is the old age of summer, it is a good time to plant a rocking chair in the shade of a live oak tree and let the last month of summer lull you into contentment.

Recently while fishing the upper Illinois, I watched canoe after canoe filled with partying teenagers and young people float past my fishing spot. I inquired of my fishing partner, “wouldn’t you like to trade places with those young ‘uns?” He stared thoughtfully at the water a little while then said, “No, I don’t believe I would. They have yet to climb all those rugged hills that we have already climbed. They think life’s all peaches and cream, bu they’ll have more trouble in an hour than I’ve had in my whole life. Let them have the youth, I’ll be perfectly content to just sit here in the shade and watch them rush through life.”

August is also the time for school to start. At least that’s the way it was in the country schools when I was attending school.

Country schools let the students out earlier than the schools in town, so we always ended up starting back in the middle of the dog days of summer.

My first grade teacher was one of my heroines. Well, let’s put things in a plainer light—I was head over heels in love with her. She was a petite woman, soft and she smelled cuddly. She taught me to read and write, and to cipher my numbers. She was awfully proud of my reading prowess because she would take me into another room filled with older students and have me read to them.

Grades 1 and 2 had one room in elementary school, grades 3, 4, and 5 were in the second room. Grade 6, 7, and 8 were taught by a male teacher and that’s where the elite were firmly entrenched–the softball team.

I swore that I would make that ball club someday. Little did I know that to make the team all you needed was a warm body. School attendance was at such a low that we even played girls on our team, and as I recall they were pretty good players, too. One thing that I learned about girls by playing ball with them, was that softball is just a game and not a life or death situation. And that an 8th grade girl certainly fills out a softball uniform better than a guy

But back to my first grade teacher. She used to capture all the guys and comb their hair just before the school photographer took our pictures every year. I didn’t fight too hard on these occasions, just a small token struggle to let the other guys know that I was all he-man. She would pull me to her breasts, comb my hair into a big pompadour all the while telling me how cute I was. I was determined to marry that woman and put her in such a nice place that she wouldn’t have to look at anyone else but me. I don’t know which was the bigger heartbreak, finding out she was already married, with a daughter near my own age, or the fact that she told all the guys how cute they were.

*******************

Gypsying about the backroads of Eastern Oklahoma I recently saw a sad sight. A motorist had run over a small mongrel dog while hurrying on his way to get nowhere and to do nothing when he got there. A small waif-like boy weeped by the dog’s side.

Having raised two sons myself, and helping them to bury at least nine of their pets, I could empathize with the young boy. I thought of a line from a poem that my own sons used to read at the funerals of their pets:
“Don’t worry master, I am here, out in the backyard under the bright grass where you left me.
It’s been a long year since I drowsed at your feet.
It is good now to feel them pressing the earth above me, like a warm quilt.”

*******************

August is a good time to start neglecting your garden that you worked so hard to get started. The sun is like molten lead and if you stay out in it too long it will cook your brains. The weeks and long grasses are firmly ensconced in good old Mother Terra-Firma and need a most firm hand to discourage them to grow another foot or so overnight.

*******************

Art Webster is a first class Water Witch. He has drilled hundreds of water wells and has yet to come up with a dry hole. I will be his witness on this, since I have helped him drill at least a dozen or so, and we hit water on everyone.

I’ve tried witching but can’t seem to get the hang of it although my brother claims to be able to feel the pull of the water. He said it feels like a hand reaches up from the ground and gently grabs hold of that stick and pulls it down. “It’s eerie,” he says, “you can’t hardly pull the stick back up. You have to back away.”

No doubt water witching is almost as old as time itself. If you are a non-believer you should hurry to the nearest library and pick up some information on the subject. You may be a first class Water Witch your own self and not even know it.

Have a good August.

written by R.L. Briggs on August 3, 1996

A Chicken is good for a laugh or two

When we drove to a nearby city on Friday, January 27th to check into the hospital to give birth, we thought we’d only be gone a couple of days, and so we prepared for being gone only a couple of days. But as fate would have it, it turned out to be seven.

J-Dub drove back to our home about 3 times during that week to check on things, get the mail, do a little work, overall, just tend to the things that needed to be tended to.

Of course in a situation like this, a lot of necessary tasks are overlooked for a short time, one of which being the chickens. We left the chickens out, as is our custom, to free-range the place. They had plenty of food and water and fresh air. The day after we returned, I quickly went out to do a head count. Thirteen is the magic number. But only twelve chickens did I find. A yellow one was gone.

Naturally, I assumed the worst. My mind returned to the coyote snatching that occurred a few months ago. I quickly did a half-way-walk-around-the-place for any signs of demise like a plethora of feathers scattered about. I checked the horse tanks, as we all know my chickens are fond of nearly drowning in a horse tank. There were no signs.

I counted my losses, allowed myself a moment or two to grieve, and returned to the house. Since then, J-Dub’s been penning them up for me at night. Their range is no longer free. They are jailbirds, for their own good.

Yesterday evening, a guest speaker was speaking at the church. J-Dub was asked to play the drums for the praise and worship time. He didn’t bother to unhook his horse trailer from his pick-up as he would be using it this morning to haul some horses to a nearby town for breeding. Shortly before the service was to begin, I received a text from my husband informing me that a yellow chicken was in the church parking lot. Evidently, she had hitched a ride to church in the horse trailer and then flew out once they were stopped.

Fortunately, some friends of ours recognized her and as the music was gearing up inside the church, I can only imagine our friends running around the parking lot chasing a stow-away chicken.

She was captured, trapped, and returned safely to her home later that evening.

I’m glad she’s home, and plus it gives me hope. If one chicken can hitch a ride to church, perhaps my lost chicken is not dead after all. Maybe , just maybe, she crossed the road and hopped a train. Perhaps right now she’s drinking a Pina Colada in Mexico. Living the life. I can see her. Beach chair, sunhat and shades, bikini, sipping on a long straw. Because, after all, the winter’s do suck here.

Emotions.

The first time I watched the movie Raising Arizona, I couldn’t believe how stupid it was. But, in its defense, I didn’t really watch it. I busied myself with other things, catching snippets here and there while my husband sat in his chair giggling his little butt off at, in my opinion, bad actors.

At a later date, I watched a little more of it, and then a little more, until finally I’d seen the entire movie and understood it.

In case you’ve never seen Raising Arizona, it’s about a couple (one outlaw, one law enforcement officer) who can’t have any children so they decide to kidnap one from a rich man and his wife who recently had quintuplets. They figured that was too many babies for one couple and they probably wouldn’t even miss one anyway.

Here’s a little clip from the movie. This scene takes place right after they have abducted Nathan Jr. and have him in the car.

I so get this. I so get her. That woman is me in a nutshell. And J-Dub too.

We are utterly, completely head over feet in love with our new baby. To the point of tears. Add to that, my hormones which are up, down, east, and west and I can break down at any moment.

I have so many emotions. Indescribable emotions. From overwhelming love that I never knew existed…..

to guilt and remorse over the circumstances surrounding her birth……

to worry that every breath she takes is normal…….

to exhaustion from the past 11 days……..

to determination to give her the absolute best in life……..

to contentment when I feel her soft cheek next to mine…..

And to think, I am not alone. Every mother in the world has felt these same feelings.

What an honor to be a mom.

She’s Here……

After a long awaited 41 weeks, our little girl, Emma Kate arrived on January 28 at 2:47 p.m. weighing in at 7.4 oz and 20 inches long.

She spent 6 days in the Neonatal ICU with breathing complications, and finally after a long, exhausting, emotionally and physically draining time where days and nights ran together, and J-Dub and I ran through the motions, we came home.

I am spending my days at home recovering from a C-section, which is no easy task and something I was completely and totally unprepared for.

Emma Kate is the absolute joy of our lives.

I can never explain how much we love her, and I already feel like she is growing up too fast. Where has the last 9 days gone?

Right now, she is filling up her diaper, and I don’t even mind!!

I’ll be updating soon, I hope, so bear with me.

Angel

A New Body

It made many trips down I-40 from Tahlequah to Pampa. It rode in the passenger seat of a red dodge pickup and when that vehicle wore out, a yellow Chevy pickup.

When he died, it rode in the back of my vehicle one last time along with the potted plants sent with condolences and a couple of cardboard boxes of belongings.

When we arrived home, it sat in the floor of the spare bedroom right behind the door. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I went about my day-to-day life and when I found time, I sorted through the cardboard boxes that had made the trip, discarding unnecessary things. But still, it remained.

When the spare bedroom began changing into a nursery, it sat on the floor watching while paint went on the walls, and office furniture was replaced with a crib. Like a child’s teddy bear with the eye missing and the stuffing coming out, it remained as a reminder.

It wasn’t valuable. It wasn’t decorative. It wasn’t useful to anyone. But it was such a part of him that I kept it around. It’s funny how when someone dies, their everyday things become such strong reminders of them. For my grandmother, it was a silver fingernail file that sat beside her chair. She probably used it every day. For my dad, it was a grimy, white Easter basket he used to carry his medication. An Easter basket. While other men have a satchel or a tote, or even a gallon size Ziploc bag, my dad used an Easter basket.

“Take one daily with a meal.” “For management of high cholesterol, take one each day.” “Take each morning and evening.” The instructions on each bottle kept him going for several years. High blood pressure, cholesterol, blood thinners, aspirin.

When New Year’s Day 2012 rolled around, sadness overcame me. A new year, a new beginning, only without him. Moving ahead, moving on, I knew I must. But I didn’t know how. And then I was reminded:

“For instance, we know that when these bodies of ours are taken down like tents and folded away, they will be replaced by resurrection bodies in heaven—God-made, not handmade—-and we’ll never have to relocate our “tents” again.” 2 Corinthians 5:1 The Message

My dad no longer needed his pills. It was just a sad reminder to me of the temporary body that burdened him.

“For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 5:7

On Monday January 2, I carried the basket to the dumpster and set it in. Don’t think I didn’t consider taking it out and bringing it back in the house throughout the day. I was home on Tuesday, the 3rd, when the loud roar of the trash truck pulled up. I heard the lifting of the dumpster, the bang of the lids as it flipped over. I imagined the dirty Easter basket and the bottles of pills scattering as they fell. I sat on the couch as the truck roared away, thinking of my dad and his new body. No longer sick. No longer burdened.

Today, he would’ve been 69 years old. He left this world February 26, 2011.

He is dancing.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

I love you.

In Memory of My Dad #40—A Lizard Story with no Ending

I first saw him as I was putting my portable air tankup up for the summer. At first I thought he was a snake, “Omigosh! Mister no shoulders,” I thought. Then I saw it was a harmless brown lizard.

Since that time, we have become friends of a sort. Well, good enough friends that we don’t infringe on each other’s territory while drinking our morning coffee.

I named him Lucky.

Lucky is a sleek, fat, brown lizard who enjoys taking in the morning sun on my front porch. As far as I can tell a lizard’s age, I guess Lucky has been living here at Stonebroke Acres several years. I prefer to think of him as an old tenant and us, old friends.

Lucky is afraid of people. He lives under my front porch and comes out only to sun himself each morning, during the early hours. He lies there with his eyes closed until some sudden movement will send him scurrying back into the dark recesses from which he came.

He lies there on the porch awaiting the arrival of the many insects that come around my digs. He flicks out his rapier-like tongue almost too quick for the eye to see and he makes a quick breakfast of some unlucky gnat or fly that comes into his territory.

His reactions are instantaneous with insects and when I come too close he scurries away in a quick, brown flash. I like to think of Lucky as a bachelor or at least, a loner of some sorts. I’ve never seen him in the company of any female lizards. His chief pleasure seems to be laying there in the sun and dining on errant insect tidbits.

It’s impossible to tell if Lucky is happy or sad with the living conditions offered here. He has what some of my friends might call a poker face. His beady eyes betray no emotion. He just sits quietly with no expression. He would make a heck of a poker player.

But I am fond of Lucky. He’s much better than a pet dog. You don’t have to feed him or take him for walks. There’s no messy litter boxes to clean up, and he’s better company than a fish or a bird. He never pries into my affairs and he certainly doesn’t allow me to pry into his. And the best part, he never asks me where I’ve been when the

Yep, the same thing happened to me. I was enjoying that story too, typing away from an old newspaper from 1996, wrapping up the last paragraph of my dad’s story and that’s where it quit me. Right in mid-sentence. Right where I’m dying to know the rest. The story has no ending.

So I considered my options: abandon this story and never let others know what a great writer my dad was by the sheer fact that he can create a personality and 500 words for an average brown lizard. I decided against that. I looked through the rest of the paper for a continuation. Fail. I looked through the box of newspapers for the scrap piece from August 10, 1996 that might have the last couple of sentences. Fail. I thought I might just leave it “as is” and explain the problem to you my faithful readers. I considered making something up myself and pretending my dad wrote it, in turn deceiving you, my faithful readers, or I could ask my faithful readers to finish the story for me and my dad.

I have settled on the last option. So, show me your writing skills….how would you finish this line?

And the best part, he never asks me where I’ve been when the………………………….

Preggo Update

We are officially on the countdown. Tomorrow we hit the 39 week mark. Only one more to go. Maybe. And I am pleased to announce that I have finally crossed over into the land of excitement.

We went to the doctor yesterday for a sonogram and a check-in. While I was working yesterday morning and anticipating the idea of seeing her face, I became overcome with joy and excitement. As I laid on the sonographer’s table, I imagined a little face that would look exactly like the one we will behold in just a few more days. How lucky we are to get a sneak peek. The sonographer lubed my belly up and began rolling her wand around as we gazed at the screen. We saw her kidneys, her bladder, the umbilical cord. We heard the heartbeat and saw the blood flowing through the veins and arteries of the cord. We discovered that she is head down (locked and loaded) as I like to call it. She is estimated to weigh 7 lbs 11 oz, but that estimate can be off by a pound either direction. And then the sonographer rolled her wand on her face.

I would love to show it to you, but she doesn’t like having her picture taken. Her hands were covering her face.

Here is a side profile we got with her hands as the big blob in front. That is a beautiful eye though, isn’t it?

I’m beginning to think she might be a stinker. When we wanted to find out her gender, she didn’t cooperate by keeping her legs crossed, now when we’re dying to see her face, she decided to play peek-a-boo instead.

So the sonographer applied this vibrating buzzer to my belly to try to scare her, and when she finally moved her hand,we got a picture of her. However, my dreams of seeing a beautiful baby vanished. I can’t tell whether she looks more like an orangutan or Mike Jagger.

It’s the nose. And the lips. Some wise people I work with told me she’s all smushed in those tight quarters and it can’t be an accurate picture. So, tonight I stood before the bathroom mirror and I smushed my own nose to compare it with hers. Then I made my husband smush his nose. There we sat staring at each other with our noses smushed flat trying to decide whose nose she has. I’ve decided she has Mick Jagger’s.

Remember, we have no TV here. This is what people with no TV do.

But look at these older pictures. They were taken on the same day back in October.

: The pig-nose, receding chin baby

The nose doesn’t look the same in any of them. In fact, the baby doesn’t look the same in any of them. So basically, we won’t know what she looks like until she slides out and hollers. Still, I’m preparing myself to feed her lots of bananas and teach her to the words to “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

When we saw the doctor yesterday, we were pleasantly surprised to discover I am dilated 2-3 cm. He said it could be any day now.

And so we wait to meet our little girl.

And she’ll be beautiful.