I got to have dinner with my parents Monday evening, an unexpected but uplifting surprise, since they are usually in south Texas from the first of January until sometime between late March and mid-April. They had called me from the road last week, saying they were visiting a cousin in Phoenix and then might swing by home on the way back south to do the farm taxes that are due this month. The next thing I know, at lunch with my sister last Sunday, I learn they've been to California in the meantime but have made it back here. Nothing was ever said about California, not to me, anyway. But that's the way of things: I can generally point a direction where I think they are, but I know I may be wrong at any point in time.
But Monday evening---we discussed the usual things, their grapefruit business, school, a little politics, some family news and stories. Then Dad says, "Hey, you know where I was the other day?" I said that Sheri already ratted him out, that I knew they'd been to California. He said, "Yeah, but do you know where?" Obviously I did not. "We were out there where that ol' boy was shooting everybody up." I drew a blank for a moment....and honestly, Dad tells a LOT of half-truths and a few flat-out lies. Finally, he said, "You know, that ol' cop who was shooting everyone up." I think I might have rolled my eyes, expecting another tall tale. But no. "Yeah, we were up there by Big Bear where he burned that place down. The fire truck came past us and swung back around and blocked the road so we couldn't go up there. There were all these cops and fire trucks and no one up at the place, so I figured that's where he was holed up and that he probably wasn't gettin' out of that." I might have looked just a bit panicked at that point, because Mom jumped in with, "Oh, we weren't that close...." Too late, Mom! Despite the fact that they are both in their 70's now, they're both quite competent, the most seasoned of travelers, but the world----the world just gets more and more crammed with danger.
I know in all truthfulness that I shouldn't worry. Long ago I came to realize that my whole family has a very specific group of angels assigned to us: they can steer a car without ever becoming visible, they sweep back trouble from our paths, they know every stretch of road from South Dakota to the Rio Grande, and they travel along with us no matter how short or long the journey. They're road angels, the kind we need most since our family is never still for very long. Take away our wheels and you take away our breath, our spirit, and our freedom. And since we are all so often on the road, those road angels keep very, very busy. I've put mine to the test numerous times, and they've not failed me, ever.
There was the time, 20+ years ago, that a suicidal deer leaped in front of my little late-80's model Accord, about 5:30 in the morning in the Missouri River hills east of the farm in South Dakota. There were enormous drop-offs on each side of the road, perfect cover for leaping deer. There was nowhere to go, no time to do it, no time to do anything. Big old Bambie scooped right up the low front end of my baby car and BAM! slammed right into and slid up the windshield, flying over the roof and off down into the ravine. If I'd had a moment to think, i.e. take charge from my angels, I might have tried to brake or swerve, sending ME off into the ravine instead. Or from a different angle, Bambi might have come through the windshield at 60 miles per hour. That wasn't the first time I felt their presence, but it was the most powerful incident in my young life to that point.
A few years later, I was returning to Muldrow after spending the weekend in Tahlequah, taking the usual backroad through the "mountains" from Cookson to Sallisaw. It was springtime, Easter weekend after a wet winter, and the county had put fresh gravel on some of the curves just north of Marble City. Gravel roads were the first and only kind I drove on for years; I know how to handle wheels on gravel. Others, not so much. I was approaching the last curve before the straightaway and the turn into Marble City when a white shortbed Chevy pickup came barreling around it, and in no time it was fishtailing sideways, straight for my little Accord---another one, much too low profile for a sideways pickup crash. I really remember that as the first time my life flashed in front of my eyes, the first time I really believed, "This is it. This pickup is going to scoop right over the hood of this car and that's going to be it." As time slowed to a crawl and I watched the pickup drifting right at me, I knew I had to be OK with that, to make my peace. But then, as I live and breathe, with only inches to spare, it was as if the hand of God came down and ever-so-gently tapped that Chevy on the tailgate, giving it purchase in the gravel and sending in into the shallow ditch back on their own side of the road. The two teenage boys inside were much more shook up than I was, I think. They hadn't yet learned that the road angels can keep us out of a deal of trouble.
There were a couple of incidents on the road between Muskogee and Tahlequah, back when I was still teaching night classes in BA and living in Tahlequah. I would attest in court that in both of these cases I was no longer steering my car to avoid an accident. Both involved driving errors on the part of others that I was able to avoid becoming a statistic to, but through absolutely none of my own effort. There is no other explanation than that the road angels I'd learned to praise and thank and bless by then had taken matters into their own hands.
And that's just me. I don't think I could begin to enumerate the number of miles we all accumulate in a year. I couldn't for that matter total up all the dangerous and deadly situations we've been protected from in our lives. It may not always be this way, but I've told my family members several times that if anything ever happens to me on the road, it's absolutely only because it's God's will and that I truly don't fear anything there. I'm not a careless or dangerous driver for knowing I'm protected---just willing to do my share to make my road angels' load a little lighter.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Winter Blue
You know how once you make a statement proclaiming something, karma sometimes sees fit to yank the rug right out from under you and leave you flat on your face? Of course---we all do. So I'm prefacing this by saying I'm a little afraid that I might be tempting fate here and jinxing myself with what I write.
February has always been a tough month for me to get through, for as long as I remember. Even though I loved the season of winter, mostly for the promise of snow, that 4- to 5-month span of brown grass and bare branches used to wear on my spirit by this time of year. Oh, I loved cold, cloudy days, especially if I could stay inside and read all day. But those days were rare. By this time, the days were much more often sunny and fairly mild. It meant that the chances of snow were less each day, yet spring, and the freedom of summer vacation as well, was several weeks off. I came to realize that a large part of this was the depression I suffered from all my life, but even after getting treatment for that, there were still vestiges of the winter gloom that would creep into the lengthening days each year; in fact, I think February has been the month when I most often had to have my medication changed or adjusted. Compound that to the 10th power for the fact that my dear Laura's birthday is tomorrow, and the last 10 Februarys have been grueling.
But so far, this year seems different. I could probably account for a lot of the whys: I don't have time to get sad, because I'm so busy and rarely home to wallow in sadness. Time just goes faster with age---and our perspective lengthens as we grow older, perhaps to balance that out. As a result, I don't feel I have the leisure or the patience for self-indulgent apathy about life. Getting to spend time with my toddler niece once a month or so is wonderful, and I look forward to every chance I have to be with her. I even have a pretty enjoyable group of juniors this year who give me little to stress about. I suspect, though, that the unusual balance I have in my mood this season is primarily a result of some very big personal changes that are hopefully in the offing for me. I'm not able to talk about them right now, but I will be soon, if all goes as planned.
Whatever it is that keeps me feeling this strong and emotionally even-keeled, I know better than to look this gift horse in the mouth. I'll keep on marching to March, awaiting those first green shoots that will signify new life for the world, and for me.
February has always been a tough month for me to get through, for as long as I remember. Even though I loved the season of winter, mostly for the promise of snow, that 4- to 5-month span of brown grass and bare branches used to wear on my spirit by this time of year. Oh, I loved cold, cloudy days, especially if I could stay inside and read all day. But those days were rare. By this time, the days were much more often sunny and fairly mild. It meant that the chances of snow were less each day, yet spring, and the freedom of summer vacation as well, was several weeks off. I came to realize that a large part of this was the depression I suffered from all my life, but even after getting treatment for that, there were still vestiges of the winter gloom that would creep into the lengthening days each year; in fact, I think February has been the month when I most often had to have my medication changed or adjusted. Compound that to the 10th power for the fact that my dear Laura's birthday is tomorrow, and the last 10 Februarys have been grueling.
But so far, this year seems different. I could probably account for a lot of the whys: I don't have time to get sad, because I'm so busy and rarely home to wallow in sadness. Time just goes faster with age---and our perspective lengthens as we grow older, perhaps to balance that out. As a result, I don't feel I have the leisure or the patience for self-indulgent apathy about life. Getting to spend time with my toddler niece once a month or so is wonderful, and I look forward to every chance I have to be with her. I even have a pretty enjoyable group of juniors this year who give me little to stress about. I suspect, though, that the unusual balance I have in my mood this season is primarily a result of some very big personal changes that are hopefully in the offing for me. I'm not able to talk about them right now, but I will be soon, if all goes as planned.
Whatever it is that keeps me feeling this strong and emotionally even-keeled, I know better than to look this gift horse in the mouth. I'll keep on marching to March, awaiting those first green shoots that will signify new life for the world, and for me.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Austerity Measures
I set out for Walmart tonight at 8 o'clock, with a list of three things I needed: a pooper scooper for the catbox, a new razor, and bottled water. Two hours and $172.38 later, I'm sitting here with the handful of groceries put away and the credit card smoking in my wallet. How does this seem to happen, EVERY time I hit the door of that place? It's a puzzle I've been working out for years, and I'm no closer now than I ever was. I just know there's a Walmart-sized hemorrhage in my budget.
Unfortunately, this isn't the only drain on my finances, or yours either, I know. Only three weeks ago, I was almost giddy enough to dance a jig when I filled up the tank of my CRV with $2.77 gas. I wasn't sure I'd ever see it that low again, and paying less than $40 a tank was quite a pleasure. Immediately afterward, as you know, it began its meteoric arc up to yesterday's price, $3.39, by ten, twelve, fifteen cents a shot. No hurricane, no crisis, no summer travel---it just is what it is; the companies do it because they can, I guess. When I moved to Broken Arrow from Tahlequah, extending my commute to Locust by ten miles, gas was less than $2 a gallon. Now, driving almost 500 miles a week when I add in my miles to the gym and to church, I spend more than 10% of my paycheck just on fuel. Add in the car payment, and it's nearly 25% of my monthly income.
Owning my home is a blessing, and I have plenty of equity in it, but still, with another 25% going to mortgage/insurance/tax, I'm down by half. Add credit card, phone, internet, cable, water, electricity, gas, trash, sewer, lawn mowing, and medical bills: pfft!! I'm done.
Now I come from good, hard-working farm stock, and we can poor-mouth and talk hard times for days on end, literally. This isn't talk; it's very real. I know in reality I would never need to worry about going without things I have to have---I have family members who can and would help me out. But that's not the point for me these days. It's more about the honor of being self-sustaining, requiring and demanding nothing from anyone. I was taught to work and live on what I make, and I'm so proud of that ethic. But there's not much to do when the cost of living keeps climbing, and my paycheck from the state's coffers doesn't. I don't hold that against my school at all (even though I don't know one single soul who can explain the formula by which they compute it), but I do think there's a broken system in place when the people who are responsible for training the minds of the future get so little respect to feed our spirits, and even less to feed our families.
I decided some time back that all of this added up to Greek austerity time for me. I gave up getting my nails done last May, even though I had wonderful nail salon owner who did mine for only $15. I don't get massages until I am so tense I'm about to break. I only buy books at Gardiner's Used Bookstore, and I don't do that very often because I don't have time to read. I hate shopping in general, so that's not a problem much. I never go to Sonic anymore because I quit drinking even diet pop in September. When school lunch prices went up more than $1 this year, I decided I would bring my lunch every day, and I have, with the exception of Thanksgiving and one bean day. I can't think of the last time I went to a movie---it's probably been close to six months, maybe more. I go out with friends for dinner once or twice a month; my last bill from the Boulder Grill downtown was $4.14 for half-price appetizer chicken nachos. I don't know how to get much more "austere" than that without living on Ramen noodles, which my doctors might have a few little fits over.
But there's still room to cut, and it's time. Refinancing my house and car at lower rates isn't out of the question. I can probably cut some on my phone/cable/internet bills by scaling back services....as long as I don't have to miss Downton Abbey, Walking Dead, Mad Men, TrueBlood, and my DVR. That's not much to ask, considering that I don't go out often. I have God knows how many books that I can trade in at the used bookstore for new-to-me books. I even have some furniture I'm not using that I could sell.
Knowing that my generation will never be as successful as our parents' generation is not a bitter pill to swallow, but a scary one to me. I'm not afraid to live by myself, to take care of my world and my business on my own, or even to go out to dinner alone, but facing this kind of grim reality is best done in numbers. Would that they were the digits of a financial boon instead of a countdown to the bottom, before we begin the long climb back up.
Unfortunately, this isn't the only drain on my finances, or yours either, I know. Only three weeks ago, I was almost giddy enough to dance a jig when I filled up the tank of my CRV with $2.77 gas. I wasn't sure I'd ever see it that low again, and paying less than $40 a tank was quite a pleasure. Immediately afterward, as you know, it began its meteoric arc up to yesterday's price, $3.39, by ten, twelve, fifteen cents a shot. No hurricane, no crisis, no summer travel---it just is what it is; the companies do it because they can, I guess. When I moved to Broken Arrow from Tahlequah, extending my commute to Locust by ten miles, gas was less than $2 a gallon. Now, driving almost 500 miles a week when I add in my miles to the gym and to church, I spend more than 10% of my paycheck just on fuel. Add in the car payment, and it's nearly 25% of my monthly income.
Owning my home is a blessing, and I have plenty of equity in it, but still, with another 25% going to mortgage/insurance/tax, I'm down by half. Add credit card, phone, internet, cable, water, electricity, gas, trash, sewer, lawn mowing, and medical bills: pfft!! I'm done.
Now I come from good, hard-working farm stock, and we can poor-mouth and talk hard times for days on end, literally. This isn't talk; it's very real. I know in reality I would never need to worry about going without things I have to have---I have family members who can and would help me out. But that's not the point for me these days. It's more about the honor of being self-sustaining, requiring and demanding nothing from anyone. I was taught to work and live on what I make, and I'm so proud of that ethic. But there's not much to do when the cost of living keeps climbing, and my paycheck from the state's coffers doesn't. I don't hold that against my school at all (even though I don't know one single soul who can explain the formula by which they compute it), but I do think there's a broken system in place when the people who are responsible for training the minds of the future get so little respect to feed our spirits, and even less to feed our families.
I decided some time back that all of this added up to Greek austerity time for me. I gave up getting my nails done last May, even though I had wonderful nail salon owner who did mine for only $15. I don't get massages until I am so tense I'm about to break. I only buy books at Gardiner's Used Bookstore, and I don't do that very often because I don't have time to read. I hate shopping in general, so that's not a problem much. I never go to Sonic anymore because I quit drinking even diet pop in September. When school lunch prices went up more than $1 this year, I decided I would bring my lunch every day, and I have, with the exception of Thanksgiving and one bean day. I can't think of the last time I went to a movie---it's probably been close to six months, maybe more. I go out with friends for dinner once or twice a month; my last bill from the Boulder Grill downtown was $4.14 for half-price appetizer chicken nachos. I don't know how to get much more "austere" than that without living on Ramen noodles, which my doctors might have a few little fits over.
But there's still room to cut, and it's time. Refinancing my house and car at lower rates isn't out of the question. I can probably cut some on my phone/cable/internet bills by scaling back services....as long as I don't have to miss Downton Abbey, Walking Dead, Mad Men, TrueBlood, and my DVR. That's not much to ask, considering that I don't go out often. I have God knows how many books that I can trade in at the used bookstore for new-to-me books. I even have some furniture I'm not using that I could sell.
Knowing that my generation will never be as successful as our parents' generation is not a bitter pill to swallow, but a scary one to me. I'm not afraid to live by myself, to take care of my world and my business on my own, or even to go out to dinner alone, but facing this kind of grim reality is best done in numbers. Would that they were the digits of a financial boon instead of a countdown to the bottom, before we begin the long climb back up.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
On Friendship, Part IV: All Good Things
Some people are perfectly content to live their entire lives in little city apartments without a blade of grass in sight or a tree to shade that grass. I'm not one of them. Neither was Laura. After living in dorms, on-campus apartments, and cramped one-bedrooms for the better part of 20 years, we both longed for space and a front porch and maybe a garage. Not too much to ask, but on state pay scale? Definitely. So we decided to get a house together after I had been back in Tahlequah for a year, teaching at Locust Grove. By great good luck, I heard that a couple of instructors in my department at Northeastern, where I still taught as adjunct, were flipping a house. They wanted to sell it, but as a favor, they agreed to consider a one-year lease with option to buy. We went to look the house over on a sultry summer evening in 1999. We got out of the car and stood at the curb, looking up at the neat red brick and black siding ranch house perched on a little rise, shaded by huge trees, both front and back. I knew already we would have to have it. I looked over at Laura, her eyes wide and sparkling, smiling as she gazed up the hill and said without fear or irony, "I'm going to die in this house."
* * * * *
Co-habitating with another grown, very independent woman can be a dangerous enterprise, especially when that woman is your best friend. I still wonder how we had the nerve to jump into that situation, knowing that most girls who come to college as best friends and are roommates end up hating the other. But we proved to be a rare and excellently matched team.
With three bedrooms, one and a half baths, an average living room, and a kitchen big enough for only a small round table, quarters were tight, but we made it work. We each had our own bedroom, and the third became what we called the Nintendo room---yes, for my Super-Nintendo she had given me for Christmas the year before. Really, it was an office/library/craft area/guest room, but mostly we really did use it for Nintendo marathons on Friday evenings. And glory! our own washer and dryer and a dishwasher promised hours of leisure formerly wasted on drudgery and chores. We could paint, plant, decorate and revel in it all. If there was a period of adjustment to sharing space, I don't remember it, except for the fact that Laura thought she needed to get up 30 minutes earlier in the mornings to drive halfway across Tahlequah to get to work. I needed to be getting into the shower at that time to get to Locust. It took about a week of her showing up to the office at 7:15 (and my teasing her about it) before I convinced her to set her alarm 15 minutes later so our shower schedules would work.
In no time, we established a domestic routine that worked for us. There were chores and problems I didn't mind dealing with---car mechanics, grocery shopping, bill paying---that had always annoyed or intimidated her. Bless her, she loved to dust, clean, and organize, all foreign concepts to me. I have only a black thumb, but she loved to grow flowers, and we now had a front porch and a back deck for her to go to town on. When it came time for her to purchase a new car, she took me to do the talking; when social occasions called for it, she did it. We broke everything down as simply and fairly as possible. For example, the one-car garage was traded every Sunday evening: one week I'd park at the curb while she had the garage; the next we'd reverse. Instead of our friendship being tested, it just grew deeper as we each thought of the other first and tried always to be self-sacrificing instead of self-promoting. It's the closest thing I can imagine to being married....with the exception that we were nicer to each other than most married couples I know.
And that was what everyone seemed to believe of us, too, even the people closest to us; they began to assume we were a couple, or even a single unit, two-become-one. Even now, it feels as though people still wait for that announcement from me, but they'll have to wait forever, because it just was not true. There was no romance at all to this love and respect; it was as pure and clear as God could ever make it. Oh, we used to talk about how everything would be so much easier if we were gay, because we were perfectly suited to one another and happy with our little home and life---but we just couldn't wish it true. We loved men, even if we loved each other more than any man we ever dated.
Our time together in our home was full of quiet but comfortable routines like Friday night naps before going to B & J's restaurant for dinner, about the same time as the Narcotics Anonymous group (the smokers' meeting) would show up after their meeting and take a bunch of tables in the middle of the room. We'd smoke along with them and eavesdrop on their jokes and life stories. Sunday nights always found us watching an HBO series: Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under. Most workday evenings from early spring through late fall, we would meet up on the deck for a run-down of our day while we had a couple of cigarettes, before deciding on what we would do for dinner. Sometimes I didn't know what I really thought about a situation until we had one of those seemingly incidental talks. As soon as I purchased the house in 2000, we got a pair of cats. Laura loved and missed having a pet, and we chose cats because they could stay in and not pick up a gazillion ticks and fleas---things which I just cannot deal with. Fitz (for F. Scott Fitzgerald) and Figaro (think Pinocchio, not the opera) were technically mine and hers, respectively, but they learned quickly that she would let them lounge on her lap for long stretches of time. Those same brother and sister tuxedo cats are lying at my feet as I write.
When I picture her now, it's most often in this home, where we became our own little family, the only family of my own I can ever imagine having. It was everything home and family should be about: comfort, acceptance, respect, laughter, and a few tears to water the soil. It's where we were when her dad succumbed to a stroke and died a day later; it was her turn to go off the rails for a while then, making me realize that we would probably be sharing a home for the rest of our lives, and I began to worry what would happen to her if I died first. Here is where I came home to after the evening I found my little grandma dead in her home and went into shock. It's where we were living when I nearly died from gall bladder surgery gone awry, and her voice was the one that called me back after crashing, saying sharply, "Cathy Jean Welker, you open your eyes right this minute!" And it was here that she came home to on a Friday night in July 2002, having been to the doctor, who told her she had to quit smoking before he would give her the massive hormone doses needed to control her cycles. Monday afternoon, the doctor called her back at work and asked her to return to his office immediately; it was home, not work, that she stumbled back into shortly afterward, face and lips blanched white, and told me that she had endometrial cancer.
The very next day, she was sent to see the gynecological oncologist in Tulsa. As I drove out of Tahlequah, I noticed her shaking in the passenger seat. I held out my hand to her; she took it wordlessly, and I did not let go until I parked the car at the office on Yale. One week later, she lay in St. John's after a complete hysterectomy and expansive search of her abdominal cavity. The uterine wall was "involved," meaning that there was no guarantee they had gotten it all. Radiation would be necessary, but chemo was not a given---not until we found on New Year's Eve that it had spread to her lungs and her bones.
The things that she experienced can't be serialized here; this blog is about her, about friendship, not cancer. But even in her 10 months of dying, Laura was the epitome of selflessness, just incapable of thinking of herself first. She was terrified that she was going to cost me my job if I missed too much school to take her to appointments. She worried about my getting my grading and prep work done at home if she was a distraction. Though she said little about it, I know she dreaded leaving her sister, who was not strong mentally or physically, to fend for herself in Iowa. Even after she finally fell and was partially paralyzed, and she was given only a week or two to live, the only thing she asked me to do for her was never to separate the cats, because they had always been together. She could have asked me for anything, anything---how I wish she had asked me for some ritual or memory to pore over!---and I would have made it happen. Instead, she made the sacrifice (I will always believe it to be true) of hanging on until after school was out to collapse into that last crisis, the paralysis and eventual coma, so that she would not distract me from work. No, she never asked anything, but left me with countless gifts, quite literally; I could never enumerate them here.
I see her shining brown eyes and her ever-so-slightly crooked smile, from sucking on her finger when she was little.
I smell her Oscar de la Renta and Beautiful perfumes.
I hear that lilting South Dakota accent, calling me "Ceej" before bursting into raucous laughter, and I hear Christmas music in July.
I taste her chicken and dumplings, the Roni's calazone she loved, virtual rivers of unsweetened tea.
I feel that fine brown hair that I French-braided for her so many times, until she learned to do it herself.
I think of her and I think: Bette Midler, biscuits and gravy, Wahoo, Johnny Mathis. I think tacky lamps and business dress and ballerina flats with bows. I think Ben and JD, Chris and Alex and Emily. I think slow driving and clocks set hours ahead of real time. I think Kraft Mac and Cheese and Chef Boyardee box pizza. I think happy dance, Steve Martin, Gilda Radner, Lawrence Welk. I think Lane Bryant, verbal dyslexia, and "St. Francis of a Sissy." I think love-friend-home. I think love/trust/faith.
I think lovelovelove.
When I picture her now, it's most often in this home, where we became our own little family, the only family of my own I can ever imagine having. It was everything home and family should be about: comfort, acceptance, respect, laughter, and a few tears to water the soil. It's where we were when her dad succumbed to a stroke and died a day later; it was her turn to go off the rails for a while then, making me realize that we would probably be sharing a home for the rest of our lives, and I began to worry what would happen to her if I died first. Here is where I came home to after the evening I found my little grandma dead in her home and went into shock. It's where we were living when I nearly died from gall bladder surgery gone awry, and her voice was the one that called me back after crashing, saying sharply, "Cathy Jean Welker, you open your eyes right this minute!" And it was here that she came home to on a Friday night in July 2002, having been to the doctor, who told her she had to quit smoking before he would give her the massive hormone doses needed to control her cycles. Monday afternoon, the doctor called her back at work and asked her to return to his office immediately; it was home, not work, that she stumbled back into shortly afterward, face and lips blanched white, and told me that she had endometrial cancer.
The very next day, she was sent to see the gynecological oncologist in Tulsa. As I drove out of Tahlequah, I noticed her shaking in the passenger seat. I held out my hand to her; she took it wordlessly, and I did not let go until I parked the car at the office on Yale. One week later, she lay in St. John's after a complete hysterectomy and expansive search of her abdominal cavity. The uterine wall was "involved," meaning that there was no guarantee they had gotten it all. Radiation would be necessary, but chemo was not a given---not until we found on New Year's Eve that it had spread to her lungs and her bones.
The things that she experienced can't be serialized here; this blog is about her, about friendship, not cancer. But even in her 10 months of dying, Laura was the epitome of selflessness, just incapable of thinking of herself first. She was terrified that she was going to cost me my job if I missed too much school to take her to appointments. She worried about my getting my grading and prep work done at home if she was a distraction. Though she said little about it, I know she dreaded leaving her sister, who was not strong mentally or physically, to fend for herself in Iowa. Even after she finally fell and was partially paralyzed, and she was given only a week or two to live, the only thing she asked me to do for her was never to separate the cats, because they had always been together. She could have asked me for anything, anything---how I wish she had asked me for some ritual or memory to pore over!---and I would have made it happen. Instead, she made the sacrifice (I will always believe it to be true) of hanging on until after school was out to collapse into that last crisis, the paralysis and eventual coma, so that she would not distract me from work. No, she never asked anything, but left me with countless gifts, quite literally; I could never enumerate them here.
I see her shining brown eyes and her ever-so-slightly crooked smile, from sucking on her finger when she was little.
I smell her Oscar de la Renta and Beautiful perfumes.
I hear that lilting South Dakota accent, calling me "Ceej" before bursting into raucous laughter, and I hear Christmas music in July.
I taste her chicken and dumplings, the Roni's calazone she loved, virtual rivers of unsweetened tea.
I feel that fine brown hair that I French-braided for her so many times, until she learned to do it herself.
I think of her and I think: Bette Midler, biscuits and gravy, Wahoo, Johnny Mathis. I think tacky lamps and business dress and ballerina flats with bows. I think Ben and JD, Chris and Alex and Emily. I think slow driving and clocks set hours ahead of real time. I think Kraft Mac and Cheese and Chef Boyardee box pizza. I think happy dance, Steve Martin, Gilda Radner, Lawrence Welk. I think Lane Bryant, verbal dyslexia, and "St. Francis of a Sissy." I think love-friend-home. I think love/trust/faith.
I think lovelovelove.
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