You were most special because you were the first: first child, first grandchild, first nephew. I couldn't help it; I've always loved you best.
You were such a longed-for baby in a family that loves children. I was so excited when I got the phone call that your mom was pregnant with you that I started yelling, "I'm going to be an AUNT!" in my apartment behind the front desk of the residence hall I was running at NSU, and the girl working the desk brought me a little congratulatory cake to celebrate the next day.
You looked so much like your dad when you were born, but it was obvious from the start that you were your own man. I remember a day when you were less than a year old, sitting on your dad's lap, your mom on the couch, and me in the floor, in the living room at the old house. You had just discovered the word "duck," and we were repeating it over and over. You belly-laughed every time one of us said, "Duck!" and we couldn't keep from laughing, too. I think this was around the same time that you liked to pop your tongue off the roof of your mouth and could entertain yourself for quite a while with that. One of the things I remember best about when you were just a toddler was how you'd say, "Train goes!" every time the vehicle went over railroad tracks. Even if you were asleep, when we hit those tracks, you'd lift your little head and mutter, "Train goes, Papa!"
You were a worker from the minute you could move a stack of blocks. I'd guess you plotted, planted, and harvested about a million square miles of carpet farmland before you could ever see over the dashboard of a tractor. If you wanted a square peg in a round hole, you would by golly work yourself ragged trying to make it happen. It made for some frustrating activities when you were trying to work with blocks and such, but it gave you an understanding that things don't always go as planned. I teased you a little too much in those days, and you let me know in no uncertain terms. I remember once when you were about 2 or 3 and I was at your house; either Dad or Papa asked if you wanted to go to the pasture to check the cows, and of course you were right on it. But before you could leave, you walked over where I was sitting, put your little hand on me knee, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, "Caffy, you not come." I laughed then and now because it was such a little adult expressing himself to me in that baby voice. But you kept your own counsel in most things, and I was a little too silly much of the time for your businesslike view of the world.
Unlike anyone else I could name, you spoke to me frankly and with smart, sweet questions about Laura after she died. You knew her because she was such a big part of my life, and you were here in Oklahoma when she died. I don't remember what we were up to, but you were with me in my car in Tulsa, and you asked me if I was OK, and did she hurt before she died, and if I was sad, and did she go to heaven. No 12-year-old boy that I've ever known was ever as expressive about death and loss as you were. It was a wonderful gift to me that I'll never forget. I was so very glad to be able to tell you that she didn't hurt anymore and that she was most definitely in heaven, where we'll all meet again.
I've worked with enough teenage boys to know how hard those years are for both the teenager and his world, and you had a double dose of it. Always stubborn, you fought so hard to be your authentic self and to bow to no one. And nothing seemed to settle you but farming---or just being outside roaming your world, whether at home in South Dakota or here in Oklahoma. I watched as you went through those headstrong days, celebrating your strength and praying for your peace, because I know a little of that kind of struggle too. Your years in football, so unexpected in a family that puts more stock in work than play, were a surprise and a pleasure to me. I wish I'd been able to see you play, but I did see the beginnings of the quiet confidence of a man developing there. Your time in school was a torment to you, I know, but a necessary one, because it gave you the time---and the challenges---to grow into who you were meant to be.
Now I see you as a calmer, self-confident young man of 22, having passed that birthday this week on the 21st, and I can hardly believe all these years have gone by. I long for the earnest boy who could name every farm implement under the sun and how and why they were used. I want to capture and never lose the memory of your phone call as a three-year-old telling me proudly, "We going to have a baby," when your twin brothers were on the way. I miss the older brother who proudly bore his 13-years-young baby sister in his arms like a little princess, coming in the back door of Grandma and Papa's house for Christmas. But I love to see the man grown and coming into his own life. You were first, and I loved you first, but never forget that I loved you not for who you could be, but for who you are. May every day bring you more peace and contentment.
Love,
Cathy
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Skin Deep
Usually,
we learn our life lessons the hard way. We might stumble and fall along the
way, but that's how we learn not to make that particular mistake again. But we can also learn what not to do by watching the people around us, as well as other ways, such as through reading books. Many years ago, when I was in graduate school, I learned a vivid lesson that hasn’t left my mind all these years later.
My last two years of undergraduate work at Northeastern, I had a good friend named James, who happened to be black. I met him when he was working at the front desk in our residence hall. We quickly became close friends, the kind that go everywhere together and talk about anything, but we were only friends. This was in the mid-80's but in Tahlequah there was enough attitude about interracial relationships that we took a lot of flak about it. People didn't care whether we were a couple or not; we heard negative things from black girls and white guys. Some of them were people we knew and some weren't. James and I didn't worry too much about it. We never felt threatened. But we spent a lot of time wondering why everyone was so upset about our friendship. In our view, we were all the same, the human condition was universal, and skin color was just a scientific crap shoot. We prided ourselves on not only being able to maintain a male/female relationship, but also in rising above people's petty ideas about race. Our friendship flourished for years into adulthood, until time and distance sent us our separate ways.
But my experience begins just after those first two years there. James went on toEdmond Arkansas
I looked down at the arm holding the book, and my skin had never looked so white. It was shockingly, sickeningly white to me for a moment. I realized in that instant that there were things I knew, things I had experienced, that James never would, because of the color of our skin. He, too, had experienced things I could not know or feel. In a way, we had been right: we were all the same...but we were the same in that everyone was different. No one could know exactly what it meant to be another person, to live in their skin and feel what they felt. Rarely have I had such a moment of blinding clarity regarding my own small ideas and narrow views.
I wish that lesson were always as vivid to me as it was that day. And, too, I wish I could convey the same experience to any number of prejudiced people I’ve known. We only learn from our own revelations, though. Keeping this one close to the surface will, I hope, always be a priority, to remind myself: We are all alike, because we are all different.
way, but that's how we learn not to make that particular mistake again. But we can also learn what not to do by watching the people around us, as well as other ways, such as through reading books. Many years ago, when I was in graduate school, I learned a vivid lesson that hasn’t left my mind all these years later.
My last two years of undergraduate work at Northeastern, I had a good friend named James, who happened to be black. I met him when he was working at the front desk in our residence hall. We quickly became close friends, the kind that go everywhere together and talk about anything, but we were only friends. This was in the mid-80's but in Tahlequah there was enough attitude about interracial relationships that we took a lot of flak about it. People didn't care whether we were a couple or not; we heard negative things from black girls and white guys. Some of them were people we knew and some weren't. James and I didn't worry too much about it. We never felt threatened. But we spent a lot of time wondering why everyone was so upset about our friendship. In our view, we were all the same, the human condition was universal, and skin color was just a scientific crap shoot. We prided ourselves on not only being able to maintain a male/female relationship, but also in rising above people's petty ideas about race. Our friendship flourished for years into adulthood, until time and distance sent us our separate ways.
But my experience begins just after those first two years there. James went on to
I looked down at the arm holding the book, and my skin had never looked so white. It was shockingly, sickeningly white to me for a moment. I realized in that instant that there were things I knew, things I had experienced, that James never would, because of the color of our skin. He, too, had experienced things I could not know or feel. In a way, we had been right: we were all the same...but we were the same in that everyone was different. No one could know exactly what it meant to be another person, to live in their skin and feel what they felt. Rarely have I had such a moment of blinding clarity regarding my own small ideas and narrow views.
I wish that lesson were always as vivid to me as it was that day. And, too, I wish I could convey the same experience to any number of prejudiced people I’ve known. We only learn from our own revelations, though. Keeping this one close to the surface will, I hope, always be a priority, to remind myself: We are all alike, because we are all different.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Manifesto
For the last three and a half years, and particularly since last fall, when I entered the Healthchoice trial program with Bailey Bariatrics, I had a lot of time to contemplate doing something I had always thought I would never do: irreversibly change the workings of my body to control my weight. I had come to terms with who I was, but my health was in a ridiculous state. Even with exercise, better diet, and good A1C numbers, my neuropathy was worsening. Something had to be done, and this was the best next step. But I wondered: Who will I be after this? How would I avoid the traps that many fall into after a change that all doctors, literature, and meetings warned us was as dramatic as a marriage, a baby, a major move? If I'm honest, I have to admit that it didn't worry me all that much. At 49, one has a certain understanding of oneself that seems unshakable.
But then two things happened this week. One: a wise good friend reminded me not to get inside my head too much---that this process certainly could do it to you, and I think she knows I have a tendency to do that anyway. And then Thursday, Mrittanie in first hour remarked, "You're so much nicer now, Ms. Welker. I mean, you're happy all the time since you had surgery." This amused me (three days back and I'm happy all the time!), but it also gave me pause. What was in my head that might change my attitude about myself? Did I have a good lock on who I am, so I don't get lost in some reverie of being someone new? Because that is the very. last. thing. I. want.
I had a flashback to when I first started teaching Freshman Comp II, around 25 years ago. One of the ways I tried to ease my reticent students into the poetry we studied was to have them write their own poetic manifesto, the legend to the map of their lives. That seems like the best way to handle the ideas passing through my mind the last few days. You'll get no poetry here tonight, but I'm going to be playing a number of songs while I write to grease the wheels. That's what you have to do when you don't drink or smoke yourself silly anymore. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Who am I---indeed, who have I always been, or been heading toward?
I am my father's daughter. I know the wail of Hank Williams and the gravelly bass of Johnny Cash like I know the sound of my own name. I love a few crime shows---rooted in my dad's love of shows we used to watch, like Mannix, The Rockford Files, The FBI---though mine run toward the more modern and somewhat gruesome. Like him, I'll make a complete jackass of myself to make a kid laugh...but don't laugh if I'm mad. Just don't. I am tall, I love sweets, I have his fair skin and reddish hair, his long fingers and lack of patience, his craving for the road and a sentimental love of what family is to one another. I am his great worry and his first pride---even though I didn't get his math gene.
I am my mother's girl. I am a reader who loves the smell of libraries, the older the better; she raised me on weekly library books. I am not the cook she is, but I can bake. I am common sense and practicality, no tears and violent protests to be found. I am her family memory, the keeper of her grandmother's spirit and her mother's heart when she wants to revisit them. I am her only pupil of sewing, which she is a master of and I will never be. I am her oldest; while I cut my teeth, she bloomed from a girl to a mother.
I am a Welker---smart, funny, hardworking, proud. I am a Brown---serious, shy, kind, quiet.
I am a sunrise woman and a sunset girl; otherwise, the daytime sky holds little interest for me, unless a storm is brewing. I am at home in the night, in the quiet, a lone hoot owl calling from the trees. I love the moon and look to it for answers, like the tea leaves in a cup. I am sure that our spirits can connect with one another through space; it's happened too many times to me for me ever to forget it.
I am a open-heart farm girl of the Plains, where a car on your dirt road in the summer evening will leave the air full of gold dust till the sun goes down. I am moved nearly to tears by the ripple of ripe wheat; much worse, the cut stubble breaks my heart. I'm filled with contentment watching cattle move across a hill of soft, full green grass. Big round bales look like happy confetti dotting prairie hayfields and alfalfa pastures. My family home is so beautiful to me that I want not to be buried when I die, but to have my ashes scattered in the pasture behind---so sure am I that heaven will open over it.
I am Laura's best friend, and I always will be. I am completely confident of being reunited with her on the other side of this world and this little life. I am still the girl I was when we met: young, immature, ready to fly. If I am brave, strong, consistent, it's because she showed me I was; she was the first---perhaps the only---person outside of my family who loved and believed in me 100%. I am able, just weeks short of 10 years since she left us, to call up her beloved voice, her laugh, her wisdom and clarity in so many situations. I am part of her memory here on earth, the one I hope she would love most. I am so sad that I don't get to see her again here, but I know I can wait.
I am mine alone; no other soul can lay claim to my spirit. I am not without a heart, but I have truly loved only one man, one so unworthy that I thought I would die of it, wished, hoped,willed myself to die from it. I am here for other reasons, some clear to me, some not so much. I'm rarely lonely; being a lone wolf suits me.
Yet I'm still the Tahlequah girl with the wild red curls, the long cigarettes, the big mouth, the know-it-all college student who loved to dance and go out with friends. I'm the '77 long-nosed Monte Carlo I drove for 9 years, high school through grad school, slipping through time like diving into creek water. I'm the Patsy Cline wannabe who found my stage in a classroom and my music in a lit text. I'm a thousand days and nights on a campus where I learned who I was apart from my home.
I wade Oklahoma rivers, swim in mountain snowmelt, ride ocean waves. I've walked the crowded streets of NYC, wandered the Alaskan wilderness, stumbled through the Malibu surf, and frolicked through Disneyworld. I know the endless open sky of Canadian provinces my students have never even heard of. I read maps like books and pore over pictures like casting runes. I dream of a day when I could traverse Europe with no agenda other than my own education and pleasure.
I am a proud Okie, though my state doesn't always make me proud. I'm rooted here beyond any moving, though it was tried once. The Texas ground didn't suit.
Now as my years advance, I find myself learning new things. I know now that, contrary to my belief for many years, I AM a vain person. I was vain about my curly hair, my long legs, my good complexion, and my elegant hands. One by one those have gone by the wayside, and I am learning to deal with growing old. I'm not bitter, but I am whiny at times.
I am ice cream and poetry, fast cars and grammar. I'm a rock-n-roll song thumping away on the stereo, driving through the dark, the yellow passing lines click-click-clicking by. I'm Miss Cheeseburger in Paradise, preferring the down-home to the more elegant. I'm Tchaikovsky and B.B. King, Rhianna and Emmylou Harris. I'm NPR and KVOO, KMOD and a Barry Manilow 8-track. I'm a homemade dress and an apricot silk suit and a green turtleneck sweater. I'm a believer that goodness, purity, and light will conquer evil and darkness. I'm basketball games and wienie roasts, theater movies and late-night television. I'm the one he won't ever forget. I am blood and bone, but I'm music in every cell of my being, Emily Dickinson engraving my soul. I somehow know what it would feel like to be able to fly, but I'm terrified of heights. Great conversation is better than any meal to me; the way to my heart is through my brain. I'm your sister/daughter/mother/friend, your teacher/counselor/neighbor/lost love. I'm my own worst enemy and my greatest champion, determined to be more tomorrow than I am now. I'm tired and worn down, but like water dripping for a thousand years, the process made me smoother, wearing down the jagged edges.
And so I find....I am more than I can write if I had the entire web to do it. You are too, dear reader.
This is who I am. May I ever be true and faithful to it.
But then two things happened this week. One: a wise good friend reminded me not to get inside my head too much---that this process certainly could do it to you, and I think she knows I have a tendency to do that anyway. And then Thursday, Mrittanie in first hour remarked, "You're so much nicer now, Ms. Welker. I mean, you're happy all the time since you had surgery." This amused me (three days back and I'm happy all the time!), but it also gave me pause. What was in my head that might change my attitude about myself? Did I have a good lock on who I am, so I don't get lost in some reverie of being someone new? Because that is the very. last. thing. I. want.
I had a flashback to when I first started teaching Freshman Comp II, around 25 years ago. One of the ways I tried to ease my reticent students into the poetry we studied was to have them write their own poetic manifesto, the legend to the map of their lives. That seems like the best way to handle the ideas passing through my mind the last few days. You'll get no poetry here tonight, but I'm going to be playing a number of songs while I write to grease the wheels. That's what you have to do when you don't drink or smoke yourself silly anymore. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Who am I---indeed, who have I always been, or been heading toward?
I am my father's daughter. I know the wail of Hank Williams and the gravelly bass of Johnny Cash like I know the sound of my own name. I love a few crime shows---rooted in my dad's love of shows we used to watch, like Mannix, The Rockford Files, The FBI---though mine run toward the more modern and somewhat gruesome. Like him, I'll make a complete jackass of myself to make a kid laugh...but don't laugh if I'm mad. Just don't. I am tall, I love sweets, I have his fair skin and reddish hair, his long fingers and lack of patience, his craving for the road and a sentimental love of what family is to one another. I am his great worry and his first pride---even though I didn't get his math gene.
I am my mother's girl. I am a reader who loves the smell of libraries, the older the better; she raised me on weekly library books. I am not the cook she is, but I can bake. I am common sense and practicality, no tears and violent protests to be found. I am her family memory, the keeper of her grandmother's spirit and her mother's heart when she wants to revisit them. I am her only pupil of sewing, which she is a master of and I will never be. I am her oldest; while I cut my teeth, she bloomed from a girl to a mother.
I am a Welker---smart, funny, hardworking, proud. I am a Brown---serious, shy, kind, quiet.
I am a sunrise woman and a sunset girl; otherwise, the daytime sky holds little interest for me, unless a storm is brewing. I am at home in the night, in the quiet, a lone hoot owl calling from the trees. I love the moon and look to it for answers, like the tea leaves in a cup. I am sure that our spirits can connect with one another through space; it's happened too many times to me for me ever to forget it.
I am a open-heart farm girl of the Plains, where a car on your dirt road in the summer evening will leave the air full of gold dust till the sun goes down. I am moved nearly to tears by the ripple of ripe wheat; much worse, the cut stubble breaks my heart. I'm filled with contentment watching cattle move across a hill of soft, full green grass. Big round bales look like happy confetti dotting prairie hayfields and alfalfa pastures. My family home is so beautiful to me that I want not to be buried when I die, but to have my ashes scattered in the pasture behind---so sure am I that heaven will open over it.
I am Laura's best friend, and I always will be. I am completely confident of being reunited with her on the other side of this world and this little life. I am still the girl I was when we met: young, immature, ready to fly. If I am brave, strong, consistent, it's because she showed me I was; she was the first---perhaps the only---person outside of my family who loved and believed in me 100%. I am able, just weeks short of 10 years since she left us, to call up her beloved voice, her laugh, her wisdom and clarity in so many situations. I am part of her memory here on earth, the one I hope she would love most. I am so sad that I don't get to see her again here, but I know I can wait.
I am mine alone; no other soul can lay claim to my spirit. I am not without a heart, but I have truly loved only one man, one so unworthy that I thought I would die of it, wished, hoped,willed myself to die from it. I am here for other reasons, some clear to me, some not so much. I'm rarely lonely; being a lone wolf suits me.
Yet I'm still the Tahlequah girl with the wild red curls, the long cigarettes, the big mouth, the know-it-all college student who loved to dance and go out with friends. I'm the '77 long-nosed Monte Carlo I drove for 9 years, high school through grad school, slipping through time like diving into creek water. I'm the Patsy Cline wannabe who found my stage in a classroom and my music in a lit text. I'm a thousand days and nights on a campus where I learned who I was apart from my home.
I wade Oklahoma rivers, swim in mountain snowmelt, ride ocean waves. I've walked the crowded streets of NYC, wandered the Alaskan wilderness, stumbled through the Malibu surf, and frolicked through Disneyworld. I know the endless open sky of Canadian provinces my students have never even heard of. I read maps like books and pore over pictures like casting runes. I dream of a day when I could traverse Europe with no agenda other than my own education and pleasure.
I am a proud Okie, though my state doesn't always make me proud. I'm rooted here beyond any moving, though it was tried once. The Texas ground didn't suit.
Now as my years advance, I find myself learning new things. I know now that, contrary to my belief for many years, I AM a vain person. I was vain about my curly hair, my long legs, my good complexion, and my elegant hands. One by one those have gone by the wayside, and I am learning to deal with growing old. I'm not bitter, but I am whiny at times.
I am ice cream and poetry, fast cars and grammar. I'm a rock-n-roll song thumping away on the stereo, driving through the dark, the yellow passing lines click-click-clicking by. I'm Miss Cheeseburger in Paradise, preferring the down-home to the more elegant. I'm Tchaikovsky and B.B. King, Rhianna and Emmylou Harris. I'm NPR and KVOO, KMOD and a Barry Manilow 8-track. I'm a homemade dress and an apricot silk suit and a green turtleneck sweater. I'm a believer that goodness, purity, and light will conquer evil and darkness. I'm basketball games and wienie roasts, theater movies and late-night television. I'm the one he won't ever forget. I am blood and bone, but I'm music in every cell of my being, Emily Dickinson engraving my soul. I somehow know what it would feel like to be able to fly, but I'm terrified of heights. Great conversation is better than any meal to me; the way to my heart is through my brain. I'm your sister/daughter/mother/friend, your teacher/counselor/neighbor/lost love. I'm my own worst enemy and my greatest champion, determined to be more tomorrow than I am now. I'm tired and worn down, but like water dripping for a thousand years, the process made me smoother, wearing down the jagged edges.
And so I find....I am more than I can write if I had the entire web to do it. You are too, dear reader.
This is who I am. May I ever be true and faithful to it.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Too Many Irons
It's another weekend when I will be away from a computer and can't post on Saturday night. This seems like the sort of thing that shouldn't happen in this day and age. My resistence to mobile media doesn't help. I don't WANT a Smartphone; I don't want ANY MORE technology that is smarter than I am---most of it already is.
Still, I know it's on my mind. Last night I dreamed---since I had surgery last week, I've been having the *w-e-i-r-d-e-s-t* dreams, even without pain meds---Last night I dreamed that I had some kind of tablet device in my pants pocket, and I jumped in a lake with it there. What does that mean, exactly? I think I was with some college friends in this dream. Or maybe it was students? I just don't know. But within a couple of seconds of hitting the water, I realized what I had done and leaped back out of the water. The rest of the dream seemed to be of me sitting in an office that belonged to Boo Roberts and waiting to see if he could rescue it, or at least save the data and media files. And Boo, in case you're reading this, do you by chance have an office with a poster of that KATT car that was in, I think, the 70's show "Greatest American Hero"? Because you did last night.
Maybe the message is just to get with the times so I don't have to post these pitiful, rambling apologies in exchange for a genuine blog. However, I do have once consolation this time: I did post two blogs last weekend, so I'm going to claim one for this Saturday. I'll think of you this weekend when I nibble the tiniest bit of wedding cake and toast the two coolest 30-somethings I know.
Aren't you glad I didn't write something lame about the sleet/snow event in May? Yep, I just had to mention it.
See you next week, kids.
Still, I know it's on my mind. Last night I dreamed---since I had surgery last week, I've been having the *w-e-i-r-d-e-s-t* dreams, even without pain meds---Last night I dreamed that I had some kind of tablet device in my pants pocket, and I jumped in a lake with it there. What does that mean, exactly? I think I was with some college friends in this dream. Or maybe it was students? I just don't know. But within a couple of seconds of hitting the water, I realized what I had done and leaped back out of the water. The rest of the dream seemed to be of me sitting in an office that belonged to Boo Roberts and waiting to see if he could rescue it, or at least save the data and media files. And Boo, in case you're reading this, do you by chance have an office with a poster of that KATT car that was in, I think, the 70's show "Greatest American Hero"? Because you did last night.
Maybe the message is just to get with the times so I don't have to post these pitiful, rambling apologies in exchange for a genuine blog. However, I do have once consolation this time: I did post two blogs last weekend, so I'm going to claim one for this Saturday. I'll think of you this weekend when I nibble the tiniest bit of wedding cake and toast the two coolest 30-somethings I know.
Aren't you glad I didn't write something lame about the sleet/snow event in May? Yep, I just had to mention it.
See you next week, kids.
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