memories – Page 7 – Angel Wheeler

Snowballs in July

I opened my freezer and noticed a bowl of snow in there from last week. Anyone for snow ice-cream in 75 degree weather?

When I was in 8th grade, I was sitting in the library, book in hand, talking and giggling with a girl across from me at the table. Suddenly our teacher starts fast walking towards us. We’d been caught. The so-called friend looks up to see the teacher coming closer, yanks the book from my hand, and pretends to start reading it, while I sat there like a sitting duck.

My 8th grade English teacher bends over the table, scolds us for acting up in the library, then wags her finger at me, and tells me that she was thinking of referring me to Honors English, but the way I am acting is showing her that maybe that isn’t such a good idea after all.

I hung my head in shame. This was the first time a teacher had really shown much interest in my learning, who saw potential in me. I hated that I disappointed her.

She walked off, I took my book back from the girl who left a smudgy dirty thumbprint on the page where she grabbed it from me. My teacher held true to her word, however. I was put in Honors English my Freshman year, and it ate my lunch.

I was used to making A’s easily, not working for B’s. We were assigned to read a book by Ray Bradbury called Dandelion Wine. We would read an assigned chapter or chapters, then have a class discussion of “literary terms” like irony. I never understood irony. It’s like poetry to me. Other students’ hands would be in the air, ready and eager to answer my teacher’s questions about “what does he mean on pg. 25 when he says he walks like an Indian?” I tried to keep up. I still remember parts of that book. I don’t remember the plot or the climax or the resolution, but I remember the feeling of home it gave me and several scenes. Especially one in particular where he saved a snowball and put it in the freezer to throw at his brother in July. That idea quickened my spirit and I imagined myself doing it, looking at my sister’s surprised face with her tan legs and tank top when a snowball hit her in the face.

The next time it snowed, I got a snowball, packed it good, wrapped it in Saran wrap, and put it in my grandmother’s side by side refrigerator/freezer. I hid it, so no one would know my ploy, on the bottom underneath something else that looked white and icy. I started counting off the days. My anticipation was high. But as a young teenager blossoming into womanhood, my energies soon turned from annoying my sister to friends, boys, cars, and cruising the drag and I forgot about that lone snowball hibernating in the freezer. Much time passed, and then I remembered. I rummaged through the freezer burned food. I never found it. I asked my grandmother if she had thrown it out, but she claimed she never saw a snowball in the freezer.

It’s probably best. I’m sure it rapidly turned to a round block of ice and it probably would have taken Jolea’s head off.

As for my English career, I went to the counselor and asked to be put back in regular English for the next year. It was just too much work. Someone should have taken my head off.

February 16, 2004

Today is February 16. Today is the day. I don’t think of it every year, the day usually passes without a thought, but today I have remembered. Seven years ago today, my 4 1/2-year-old niece was holding a puppy, singing it a song, when she was suddenly attacked by two Rottweilers. I was at work, just finishing up tutorials when I was paged to the office for a phone call. My sister-in-law told me that Ashlynn had been bitten by her dog and they were in the emergency room. Her voice was calm, and I imagined she had been bitten by a dog, needed a couple of stitches, and would go home later that night.

When I walked into the emergency room and met my sister-in-law, saw her face, and heard her words, I knew then that it wasn’t just a bite. The emergency room personnel let me go back and I entered and saw the doctors, the nurses, and my brother all around her bed. Steve, her dad, was holding her hand. Then someone moved back and I saw Ashlynn with her skinny little naked body laying on the table. She was alert. She turned her head and the first words to me were, “I’ve been dog bit.”

The Lord was in that room. I could feel him everywhere. Although the situation was very serious, the bleeding had stopped, Ashlynn was extremely calm, and a peace was upon me that I cannot explain. The nurses started pointing out the wounds to me, only when they rolled her to her side and I saw very deep bites on her lower back with tissue protruding that I felt my stomach go queasy. They were preparing her to be transported to Amarillo for surgery. The room was quiet. Suddenly a doctor grabbed my hand forcing into Ashlynn’s and urged me to talk to her and tell her she was going to be okay.

I began to get a little panicky realizing the seriousness of it all, knowing that my mother needed to be there. And as much as I should have stayed there with my niece and my brother, I needed to get out of there. So I left. I went to try to find my mom. This was before she carried a cell phone. She worked for a home health agency. I knew about 3 of her clients and where they lived, so I got in my car and drove by all their houses looking for her car. I couldn’t find her. I called my friend, asking her to pray, I called my aunt, my grannie, everyone I knew, pleading them to begin to pray. Someone found my mom and by the time I returned to the hospital, she was there and they were loading into the ambulance.

They gave Ashlynn morphine and she never slept. It had an adverse reaction and was as if she was coming out of her skin, reaching for things that weren’t there, saying bizarre hallucinating statements. Then she went into surgery. After a while, the doctor came into the waiting room and informed us that he had sewn up her front, and when he rolled her over to sew up her back, the bites were much deeper than surface level, so they needed to open her up in the front to clean and stitch the interior wounds. The dogs had nearly bitten through her. She had cuts on her intestines, kidneys, stomach, and liver. Stitching the intestines was time consuming because the doctors had to literally pull them out and unwind them to search each and every inch for wounds.

Four hours later the surgery was over and she was placed in ICU. By this time, the word had reached all four corners of our small town. When she awoke she was greeted with visitors, flowers, cards, phone calls, stuffed animals, more than anything I’ve ever seen. The nurses began to turn the visitors away. During the next 10 days of recovery, our family was showered with love. Prayer chains were active, a fund and donations were given, strangers who saw it on the news or read about it in the paper came to visit, sent her cards, gave her toys. People came daily from surrounding churches to pray for her without fail. Mankind is truly generous and good.

She’s had two other surgeries since to undo scar tissue that formed adhesions and caused unbelievable pain in her intestines.

I hate to think about what she endured. I remember her words that day in the hospital, “I need a drink. I got dirt in my mouth.” And I can’t help but picture her being dragged around the backyard by those dogs whose animal instincts were to kill.

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” Genesis 5o:20

The greatest act of love I’ve ever witnessed came during that time. One stranger who came to pray told me he was praying for healing of the memories. I had never heard that expression before. So much of our focus was on her body, and not her mind. Our God is so good. That prayer was answered and although she has scars to remind her, Ashlynn has no fear of dogs to this day.

Today she’s an outstanding eleven year old girl. I talked to her on the phone a while ago. She was going to jazz class and then to church, two things she loves. She was talking with her mouth full and I scolded her. She made all A’s and B’s on her report card. I think she deserves a little money for that.

I couldn’t imagine my life without her. She is a little bundle of energy, a friend to all, a hater of broth, an amazing artist, a survivor for sure.

And a testimony to our God, who is with us in the valley of the shadow of death, who brings us through trials, who saves our souls, and heals our wounds, and our memories.

To God be the glory.

Footprints in the Snow

A couple days ago, my husband shoveled us out of the snow. It was just in the nick of time too. I believe with my all of my being that he was on the verge of having a full on attack of deliriousness as a side effect of the cabin fever he’d developed after being cooped in the house.

It’s like we were living in The Shining. We were trapped, confined, imprisoned for….for……months.

It was at least days.

Okay, okay, it was only about 6 hours. But that’s not what it felt like.

Unlike the movie, The Shining, with a little determination, and a lot of J-Dub’s muscle behind a snow shovel, we could get out and weren’t being chased through a maze by a madman with a hatchet. And I must admit I never witnessed twins murdered in our hallway, or blood pouring from the walls, or a small boy wiggling his finger growling REDRUM, REDRUM.

Alright, so I guess it wasn’t anything like The Shining. Our biggest problem was J-Dub was bored.

He said he was going out to the place. “The place” refers to our new little piece of land with a lovely trailer house {snicker, snicker} we bought that has given us fits and convulsions since closing day way back in October. I decided I should let the stink blow off me, and go see all the crazies driving around town in the snow, so I pulled on twenty extra layers and hopped in the passenger seat.

The snow was deep when we pulled up to the gate, so we decided it’d be easier to park in the county road than to drive through the deep snow.

J-Dub led the way. My boots were heavy and the snow was bottomless. Lifting my knees up to my chest to take my next labored step was difficult. I hollered out from behind him, “You’re going too fast!.” He turned his head and hollered back, “You’re going too slow!”

Knowing he wasn’t going to slow down and wait for me, I got the brilliant idea to walk in his footsteps, and save myself a lot of hard work.

I’m sure you’ve seen footprints in the snow before, I’m sure you’ve even walked in snow deeper than this, but if I told the truth that it was only a few inches deep instead of having you believe it was 3 1/2 feet, and that it was a very short walk to the front door, it doesn’t make me sound as tough, eh?

Walking in someone else’s footprints in the snow makes me all nostalgic and I think of the time when there was a “for real” blizzard and I walked with my dad to a little convenience store several, and I do mean several, blocks away ill-dressed in a measly pair of tennis shoes. We needed food. I was about 10, he was about 40, and I realize now how terribly I must have slowed him down. And if my memory serves me correctly, I begged to go, and he insisted I shouldn’t, until of course he gave in like dad’s sometimes do when their obnoxious daughters won’t stop whining. He probably at that point was thinking, “Fine, go with me, learn your lesson, you little ninny headed brat.”

And I did learn my lesson. It was cold, and I was miserable, and very glad to get home to my momma. That day I remember walking in his footsteps, which was not easy to manage since his stride was so much longer than mine. But all the same, I was thankful they were there.

The picture of these footprints in the snow also remind me of my Savior Jesus, and that beautiful poem Footprints in the Sand.

“LORD, you said that once I decided to follow
you, you’d walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that during the most
troublesome times in my life,
there is only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why when
I needed you most you would leave me.”

The LORD replied:
“My son, my precious child,
I love you and I would never leave you.
During your times of trial and suffering,
when you see only one set of footprints,

it was then that I carried you.”

Be blessed.

Wabi Sabi

Yesterday I wrote about an avocado green canister that is banged up, rusted, and just plain ugly, but beautiful despite it’s imperfections. Rather than the reactions I was expecting to receive, several folks said they loved that canister.

I’m wondering if this green canister falls under the term Wabi Sabi. That word in itself is just fabulous to say. Wabi Sabi. Try it. It rolls off the tongue like Obi Wan Kenobi, not that I have any idea who that is. I’m much too young.

Or Ping Pong. Ying Yang.

Cheech and Chong.

Wabi Sabi is a Japanese philosophy of appreciating things that are imperfect, primitive, and incomplete. I understand it as a “less is more” mind-set. A place where non-essentials are weeded out and only essential items are left regardless of their imprefections.

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It’s simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent.~~architect Tadao Ando

Robyn Giggs Lawrence has written a book called Simply Imperfect: Revisiting the Wabi Sabi House. I read an article she wrote recently that helped me realize this is what I’m aiming for. This is the direction I’m heading. I want Wabi Sabi!!

The two words wabi and sabi have different meanings and have not always been used together.

Wabi means humble and simple. Someone who is perfectly herself and never craves to be anything else would be described as wabi. A common phrase used in conjunction with wabi is “the joy of the little monk in his wind-torn robe.” A wabi person epitomizes Zen, which is to say, he or she is content with very little; free from greed, indolence, and anger; and understands the wisdom of rocks and grasshoppers.

Can’t you just see that little monk’s weathered, aged, grinning face?

Sabi means rusty and weathered. It’s the understanding that beauty is fleeting. Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace.

In home decor, wabi-sabi inspires a minimalism that celebrates the human rather than the machine. Possessions are pared down, and pared down again, until only those that are necessary for their utility or beauty (and ideally both) are left. What makes the cut? Items that you both admire and love to use, like those hand-crank eggbeaters that still work just fine. Things that resonate with the spirit of their makers’ hands and hearts: the chair your grandfather made, your six-year-old’s lumpy pottery, an afghan you knitted yourself (out of handspun sheep’s wool, perhaps). Pieces of your own history: sepia-toned ancestral photos, baby shoes, the Nancy Drew mysteries you read over and over again as a kid.

So yes, I’d say this green tin is very wabi sabi.

And I’m keeping it.

Words to describe a wabi sabi philosophy.

Simple
Uncluttered
Beautiful
Authentic
Slow
Clean
Quiet
Imperfect

I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.

Anatole France (1844 – 1924)

The Memory of a Sound

I recently purchased this magazine.
I say recently, but it was way back in 2010.

I have no idea why I would purchase a magazine called Do it yourself, since I don’t do anything myself. There must have been something that caught my eye on the cover, but now…..who knows? This is one of those mags that if you have nothing to do all day except create adorableness from egg shells and paper, this is your heaven.

It does have some extremely cute crafts in it.

See, I even dog-eared this page on crafting with felt. Felt makes me happy. Not that there’s even a remote chance I’ll be frolicking with felt in the future.

This is an old railroad tie used as a mantle. I love it. We have a similar piece of rustic roughness found in an old building that we are going to use as a mantle in our little trailer house on the prairie. Maybe in 23 more years or so.

But the point of this whole post is this:

These canisters.

My old grannie had an ugly-as-sin, avocado green tin canister just exactly like the one in the back of this picture.

It sat on her countertop next to the stove, and she sometimes stored goodies such as homemade peanut butter cookies in it.

I remember stealthily trying to lift the lid off to sneak a cookie or treat. The “swoosh” of the lid coming off the canister echos in my head. I would try not to make a sound, and inevitably always would pling, plang, and gong one against the other, giving myself away. Like sneezing during a game of hide-and-seek.

Sometime during my childhood, we got a new step cousin in the family. He wasn’t one of us, and I remember treating him as an outsider. When memories like these flood back, I always try to blame my sister. But truthfully, I don’t know who was the instigator of being harsh with him. It could’ve been my idea, or my cousin’s (his step-brother) or my sister’s, regardless I remember the four of us being outside huddled under a tree, being ugly to our new family member and telling him that “WE (the privileged real grandchildren) knew our grannie’s secret hiding place for goodies and that he had better be nice or we wouldn’t let him know.”

I wish I could go back under that tree and change that conversation. I hope he doesn’t remember. I’m ashamed.

Seeing these burnt orange canisters in a magazine stirred something inside me. I asked my mom, who now lives in my grannie’s old house, if she knew where that avocado green canister was. She said it was around there someplace. Then about one week later, I received a call, and lo and behold, the little criminal she has living with her (another story for another time) was cleaning out the garage and it turned up.

Here it is. On my kitchen countertop by my stove.

It’s not in as good of condition as the orange ones in the magazines.

Why I have this in my house, in my blue and yellow kitchen, is something that I must explore deep within my soul. And maybe discuss with my therapist, which happens to be Marie, my school librarian.

Why, when I am desperately trying to simplify and minimalize, did I bring this old junky, unfashionable, semi-unpractical item out from the dust and mire of a dirty garage to sit purposeless on my already cluttered kitchen counter?

Why do I sometimes go to my kitchen for no other reason but to lift the lid just so I can hear the pling from my childhood?

I know why.

It’s so I can see my grannie sitting in her chair with a poodle on her lap.

Or standing at the kitchen counter pressing out the peanut butter cookies. She would let me mash on the cookie dough with a meat tenderizer to create the little indented designs and then sprinkle sugar on top when they came out of the oven, soft and warm.

I’m suddenly having a peanut butter cookie hankering.

And I need a tissue.

Pie-an-er

[DSC_0369.JPG]

I took pie-an-er lessons when I was just a girl.
I don’t know how many years I took, or what level I made it to. Let’s just say I ain’t no Chopin.

Or Liberace.

Or Elton John.

Or even Schroeder.

My first teacher was a sweet, soft-spoken Baptist whose home smelled of freshly brewed coffee, who smiled sweetly and encouraged gently.

After a couple of years with her, my mom decided to move me to a different teacher. One who might push me a little harder.

My second teacher was an old man, who worked from a studio that smelled of old men, who harshly rapped a baton on the piano to force me to keep time, and corrected harshly.

I left my piano lessons crying and begged my mother to allow me to quit.

Finally she conceded, but made me promise that I would take lessons again someday.

At nine years of age, with tears streaming, I promised.

I crossed my heart and hoped to die.

Stuck a needle in my eye.

And I never kept it.

I’ve lived with the guilt.

So about 2 or 3 years ago, just 24 years after my promise to my mother, I decided to take lessons again.

Only a child from my womb could make my mother any happier.

My third piano teacher is another sweet, soft-spoken Baptist whom I visit on Friday’s at 3:30. Most of my lesson is spent gabbing away with one another, since we just love to visit and catch up. That’s what makes it so special. It’s not just piano lessons, but a friendship.

But now I’ve quit again. When we bought our Little Trailer House on the Prairie, and started yanking up carpet, texturing walls, painting, laying floor, my time was swallowed up, and my piano practicing no longer fit in my day. I would show up on Friday’s to my lesson, hang my head in shame, tell her I’d do better next week, only to realize it had taken second fiddle and practicing piano just wasn’t happening.

So I told her I needed a hiatus. It felt like a break-up. I cried. She remained strong. I promised her I’d be back at the first of the year. I crossed my heart and hoped to die, stuck a needle in my eye. We made a pinky swear, then cut our hands and became blood sisters. Nothing would stop me from returning to piano lessons. As soon as we got the place finished, moved, and settled in, I would be back .

Now it’s the first of February, and we still haven’t gotten the place finished, much less moved or settled in.

I miss my piano lessons.

I miss my teacher Suzie.

I pulled out some music the other day, sat down to play ~~Row, Row, Row Your Boat~~ a beautiful concerto and couldn’t remember where middle C was.

Please don’t tell my mother.

The Age

It’s Saturday. Yesterday’s beautiful snow is lying in dirty spots here and there hidden in shadows from the sun. Up against fences, in flower beds, in corners of the yards. The rest has melted away. Today is the first of a 16 day break from work/school for me and I am ecstatic. So ecstatic that I awoke before 4 a.m. ready for my vacation.

I do believe I’ve hit “the age”. The age where you wake up early even when you don’t want to. The age where you no longer fly out of bed ready to start the day, but rather step lightly and gingerly to the easy chair to give your joints a bit more time to warm up. The age where you long for peace and quiet instead of people and noise.

Last night J-Dub and I went to a little Christmas social then decided to go to the video store and look at magazines and videos. After perusing a good 20 or 30 minutes, we left empty handed. Walking out to the truck I said I just wanted to put on my jammies, drink something hot, and read a couple pages in a book before falling asleep.
He agreed.
It wasn’t quite 9:00.
So we’ve hit the age.
Big deal.

Sometimes we reminisce about when we were children and we would eat with our grandparents at Furr’s Cafeteria, which has long since shut down and been replaced with a Mexican Food restaurant. In our memories, old people lined the hall of the cafeteria, had employees carry their heavy trays while they struggled with their canes and walkers, and blew their noses in the maroon cloth napkins.

Last weekend we went into the big city and in an attempt to avoid the crowds went shopping at antique stores. I saw drinking glasses that I used at my aunt’s house, toys I played with as a young child, dishes from my grandmother’s cupboards, Little Golden Books I’ve read, and knick-knacks that sat on my mother’s dresser. I’ve hit the age where almost all the antiques offer a memory.

Afterwards we decided to treat ourselves to Furr’s Cafeteria. We got our trays and our napkin-wrapped silverware, which is now paper napkin-wrapped, and went through the line. I tried desperately to veer from my childhood choices. I was going to try something new and different. After all, I am an adult now. But it was as if some force from the past controlled me. I wanted to order roast beef and green salad. But it was as if I was a marionette whose puppeteer was manipulating my hand choosing baked fish and tartar sauce, fried okra, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy, a hot roll, and even when I longed desperately for pie, I was compelled to choose tapioca pudding with the whipped cream and cherry. All the things from my childhood. All the dishes I’ve ever eaten in all my outings to Furr’s cafeteria. It was a delight. It wasn’t the best food we’ve ever had but it was different from the restaurants we usually eat. At the booth I had trouble hearing Jason a couple of times and had to ask, “Huh?” He pointed out that I was “fitting right in” at Furr’s.

That day in Amarillo I relived bits and pieces of my past. I thought of my grannie who served Saturday morning pancakes in stacks of four cut in triangles on those same Fiesta plates from the antique mall.

I thought of my parent’s red bedroom, with red carpet, and a red crushed velvet headboard when I gazed upon that glass rooster that used to sit on their dresser filled with change and such.

I thought of our kitchen wall with those coca-cola trays with the old fashioned women encouraging us to Enjoy Coke.

I thought of scary Friday the 13th movies and Jason’s mask when I saw an old barn picture that used to hang in our home. It always reminded me of a killing spree on Friday the 13th and I was scared of it. hu, hu, hu, ch, ch, ch…..hu, hu, hu, ch, ch, ch……I studied it for a long time. It was smaller than I remember and so benign-looking 15 years later.

The past is gone and all that is left are my memories. Eventually those will pass too. And some day, this Saturday with the melting snow will be a memory that I will be trying to grasp hold of. Our lives are like a dream. The kind where you wake up and you don’t remember it all, just a moment here and there. You close your eyes and try to return to it because it was pleasant. But all you have is a snippet here and a fragment there and the pieces don’t come together quite right. And you long to re-visit, but you can’t. You just can’t.

And that’s one reason why I write. These memories need a place to live.