a winged heart

Snow crunched underfoot with that squeaking tone it can have. Still, I could sense the early morning quiet seeping deep into me, I could almost feel the earth tilting. Wrapped up cozily, my face covered for warmth, I heard my father, softly telling my brother something. I knew I had arrived at a place that was going to be incredibly interesting for me, I could just sense it. Stars twinkled in the early predawn, telling of things to come.

The town was sleepy and what someone would call "country" being that it was in the southern United States. People canned foods and traded their canned goods as fast as lightning struck, to help get by. There was green beans given for blackberry jam, over coffee.There were strawberries and stewed tomatoes discussed over croquet rounds or after church. People knew how to call for a square dance and how to pick banjo, or to fiddle or riff on a guitar all around you. People danced and sang, and made music as second nature there.

There were craftspeople as well in every family, traditions handed down out of necessity, and for fun.
Women quilted blankets for the bed out of their old dresses and sometimes stuffed a pillowed quilt with dozens of pairs of worn down stockings (panty-hose) from their church-goings. They knitted and crocheted, sewed whole wardrobes for families...men worked with wood, knew something about a car, were handy with an oil can. My Mamaw quilted, painted on fabric, was a master seamstress, "cro-shayed" afghans in a day or two, embroidered things, crafted.

My other Nanny would make beautiful ornaments for Christmas-time, made amazing bread-n-butter pickles, did ceramics. My Papaw whittled, made walking sticks for hiking the trails, a retired master carpenter, he was not doing too much to keep happy, but keeping happy might mean sitting on the back step in the sun whittling down a stick, making a pile of curly little sawdust that I would grab to play with. My nanny's husband Papaw, retired from the Ministry, was so full of heart, he knew how to play the guitar like Segovia, if not better...I didn't know anything about it until I was fifteen and spent a summer with those two in Florida, chalk that up to "the divorce" and moving a bit far away with mom.

Our homes were full of laughter and tears, just like now. I would not dare to say it was a "simpler" time, just slightly different. Man can only evolve so fast, or devolve. However we choose to look at it. People had lots of problems and they didn't have them too, just like now. They were torn by big decisions and stumped by them, letting things get them down. And they paraded through them and solved 'em, keeping their feet on the ground, their nose to the grindstone...balancing things however they could, until things "worked themselves out" one way or the other. The bustle and energy of life was only slightly different for them.

My Aunt Bessie's home was full of antique wardrobes, made of mahogany, walnut, oak...in those days closets were not mandatory in a farm home. Mirrored and strong enough to last yet another hundred or so years, later in life I would study them and mentally pick a favored one. Not that I wanted her to pass it on to me, I was far to young to want what my family had, or to know what a legacy meant. I loved that house...and Aunt Bessie...but I didn't know her like I knew Emma.

We would go to my great Aunt Emma's on the lake sometimes as I grew, my grandmother Georgie, and her sisters would gather together for strength and camaraderie, with or without the menfolk. We would sit a lot, talking quietly. Just listening too, birdsong was musical enough for background fill wasn't it? A dogs barking, a horn blast and a neighbor yelling at his kid to "Hop in the car, before thay'r all gone". You just kind of knew that in a few minutes time, you might hear a boat motor rev up down by the lake. Someone might say "Well who wants some tea?" or "Who's up for a game ah cards?" and "I'll play" or "Should we walk down to the lake, first, while it's nice and cool?" or "I'd rather have some lemonade". I cherish those moments with them. Sometimes Verda or Nelda would come, I was often surrounded by a clutch of old women, sisters and good friends.

The car motor revved, and we sat into motion. A crunch of snow under the tires, a slip-n-slide swerve, and then, the slick rainy sound of the wheels on wet pavement. A radio switched on, "Running Bear...loved Little White Dove".... I was told that my dad would sing that to me, that was a favorite song, back then. Just before the Beatles hit the scene. Things seemed just like always. Bundled up cozy and warm against the elements you felt insulated from all harm. My brother sat close too, this was before seat belts were required or even second guessed, we relied upon God, and good luck for protection. My brother and me, might lie down to snooze a bit more in the big backseat of that ol' Chevy with the shiny stainless ashtray (that once split my head) on the back of the front seat where my parents sat.

(Running Bear Loved Little White Dove)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3OOKAqf2Js

Mom and dad were silent like the snow. I just could not know for sure if that argument that made me leave my body behind, just the night before would bring good changes or bad, at that point. It brought both and abundantly so. I don't really remember much about daddy, anymore from early on in my life. Just that I loved him like a God, I did. I knelt at the feet of this man in utter care for what he wanted. His smile was my life. He somehow gave me great faith that like him, life would be good, I figure it was the love connection between daughters and dads.

Two gift vases were shattered on the floor, and so was my parents love affair. The first big betrayal, a lost marriage, a broken connection, our dad would become a part of our past, no longer really ours. Was it about my mom buying a yellow dress, or that my dad had to many rifles? My mom and dad would argue over us children for many years, we would become pawns in the game of divorce and child-support. A little white pony would be presented to my brother and I, throw my mom off one day in a rebellious fit of fervor...and die, to be turned into glue? Someone said...we had named him Fury, after a show about a horse, on the television set. The old man at Irving's store next door called our pony snowball instead, fed him sugar and salt licks.

Television would become my part-time parent, my grandparents would parent me too. Mom would grow cold with the need to provide, marrying a hidden psychopath, and shortly, laughter would be harder to come by than tears for me. Before I was seven I felt like a woman, I attribute that to some light fondling by my mother's strange husband, and an incident or two with his father as well. I was a confused girl who thought she knew something about life, and that for sure there were a lot of nuances to decipher and decode about it. That one might need a lot of sensitivity to keep themselves safe in it, or even hyper-sensitivity. I discovered that things could get very confusing very fast. That if sometimes extremely beautiful, that as you lived, there were some moments that damaged and scolded you, with no reasonable explanation for those times.

That sometimes Life gave forth pain and sorrow, much as it gave you flowers in the field. That days would have moments of pure bliss and others of banal torture. Before I was seven, I deeply yearned for my father back, and for my mother back, too. Longed sadly, for the life that was stripped from me, to be returned. There was another television show that we watched around that time. They called it "Branded", I remember how it opened with the man, a soldier, being stripped of his honor...how his medals of honor were torn from his uniform, and every button. And how I already related to him, "man to man", and I was just a little girl. Still, I already knew all about innosence turning to shame. I kept my secret for most of my life, I told my mother about my step-father's "poverty", at eighteen. Told my father about it at thirty two, when we took a ride in a boat on the Cherokee lake, where he lived...where I had long before had some of my best moments with my Great Aunts and my Mamaw Bounds. I had not seen him for sixteen years while I lived in Hawaii, raising my sons and skimming beaches, I have not seen him since that short trip back home, but the memory of his heart still lights up my very soul.

Branded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlUS5-ag_g&NR=1