Remembering How to Laugh (c) Nita Walker Boles

When I was a child, my life was just like Robert Lewis Stephenson said:  The world is so full of wonderful things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings!

In my kaleidoscope of delightful experiences were the Rocky Mountains just a 20 minute drive away, the plains of Kansas and Missouri on the way to our Grandparents Walker for Christmas, all covered with snow.  There were Museums and Dinosaurs, school and Brownie Scouts and then Girl Scouts. There was Church and Bible School, and there was the Symphony in the park and every book available to me from the library. I could go on with the richness of life, full of so many wonderful, wonderful things.

But growing up in the nest of our family's love was the best thing ever. Our parents always shared their own Aunts and Uncles with us, and we had to reach adulthood to realize that they were Great-Aunt so and so to us in truth. And while most of our relatives were in Texas we had a special Aunt in Denver who happened to belong to our father. Aunt Jessie was a twinkly, delightful woman, married to Uncle Smitty who died when I was about 4, so young that I just have a few memories of him.

They had a daughter, my father's cousin, Barbara, who happened to be deaf and who married a man who also was deaf. So our Second Cousin had a daughter, Laura, who is probably one of the foremost American Sign Language teachers in the US.  She grew up bilingual, with a grandmother who helped her straddle the two worlds. Laura and I were close to the same age, and she and her family frequented the bigger family gatherings at Uncle Rufus and Aunt Esther's.  Uncle Rufus was brother to Aunt Jessie and our Grandmother Walker.

On Sundays, we would often gather for a wonderful meal of friend chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans and unequaled Granny Johnson rolls. (They were made by Aunt Esther's mother, Granny Johnson, while she was still living.)  We children were always expected to help clean up.

When I was not big enough to stand at the sink to wash or rinse dishes, I was allowed to stand on a chair to help out, and one particular day when I was standing next to Aunt Esther, who we all well-knew was blind, I realized that not only was she blind, but that she could not see whether or not the dishes were clean.  Yet as I rinsed them, none were dirty and none needed to be sent back for another going over, even though that might occur at our house, where Nobody was blind.

So, to my mother's consternation, I asked Aunt Esther how she could tell if the dishes were clean.  Blind Aunt Esther could easily hear my mother's humph at my social faux paux, but she good-naturedly said, "Here, honey, now close your eyes and I will show you" and she guided my hand over the surface of the plate.  I learned that day that seeing wasn't always necessary to see.

But in Sunday School our story was about a blind man and Jesus.  Although those wonderful miracles occurred when He was on the Earth, seldom in our times had many really heard of the blind being healed. But there was at least help nowadays for the blind, including a special way of reading. And to prove it, they gave us a memory verse both in printing and in Braille.  I was too excited as I shared it with Aunt Esther the next time I saw her: Now she could read!

Of course it was disappointing to know that she had only been blind for a few years, and that while she could read when she was sighted, she didn't automatically learn to read Braille when she lost her sight. I was no help but I tried to learn from the little Braille verse in hopes of someday helping her.

Meanwhile, Aunt Esther went on countless outings to the mountains, where I gloried in the beauty of God's creation and reported it to anyone who would listen, including Aunt Esther, who would probably rather have heard it all for herself. Somehow I did learn to be quiet and appreciate the gentle growning of tall Aspen trees in the wind, and the rattling of their coined leaves.We were greeted with the sounds of the birds, and the rivers and streams. And with the goodness of simple foods prepared by our mother with Aunt Esther's assistance, and cooked over fires in the campsites at Evergreen and Estes Park.

Laura was there many times with her parents, and with Aunt Jessie. Her mother and father could not hear the birds or the rushing water, but they could feel the breeze that rustled the leaves and enjoy the cold running streams. They could appreciate the beautiful landscapes and skies, and share our company. I was so lucky but I really thought everyone had both the blind and the deaf, whom Jesus blessed, in their families as well. Signing wasn't easy, but over a few years both me and my sister learned to sign a little, and then, we moved further away, and except for a few words, and an occasional letter in the alphabet, I forgot most of it from lack of use.

Time went by. Aunt Esther, Aunt Jessie, and all of the older generation were gone.  I was now a young mother with four children. It had been a walk in the park with the first two, Beckie and Tim. But during my third pregnancy I was impressed that she would be born with some special needs, and that it wasn't going to be any walk.  I felt resolute that there was nothing that God and I couldn' t handle.  When she was born it was obvious to me that we had some problems, but it was as though every doctor could not see her  needs. I had to become a warrior, a crusader to get basics like speech therapy, eye surgery, and occupational therapy for her.

I slowly became a less than happy mom.  Maybe I was an angry mom. I had truly forgotten how to laugh.  When she was about 3, I told my husband, well, it is time for number 4. And it was. As soon as Deborah arrived on a sunbeam, smiled directly at her dad, locking eyes with him and him alone, I began to stand back in awe. She was a dynamo in our household. Everyone delighted in her company. She kept us in stitches, and she would never allow Rachel to sit back as she had before she came, observing the neighborhood playing in our front or back yard.  She was one of the Little Rascals once Deborah hitched onto her, and watching,  I remembered, oh, yeah. Laughing is good.  Laughing is GREAT!!

But Rachel's future was uncertain where we lived. As of that time New Mexico had not yet passed Public Law  94-142,which would have allowed schools to accept matching funds for Special Education if they complied with certain rules.They were the only state in the union not to have met the needed changes for the sake of impaired children.  We became part of a parent support network, and met a number of other families whose children included a variety of special needs, but many were on the Autism spectrum. We educated people locally, speaking to the Lion's club, the Kiwanis, and others about the need for more funding for special needs students.  

The law passed, and I attended the first annual New Mexico Governor's conference on Children with Chronic Impairments in 1985. As a delegate, I worked on a committee that determined that parents and families would be the first line of priority in determining what was best for the affected child, not the state.

Over a 3 day period I heard many stories and learned so many things that could be done. But getting to know others who dealt daily with chronic impairments that so far exceeded my own experience gave me some perspective on the difficulties our own family was facing.

I could see one thread very common in many, many of the affected families It was not hard to see the wear and the abject fatigue on the face of the mother whose child lived at home on a ventilator, knowing the inevitable outcome would be an early death. Yet for the majority of us whose children would certainly live, we mourned the quality of their lives both now and in the indefinite future.  And every day it would seem, some families would wake up, put on sackcloth, and  walk quietly and mournfully around the Altar of the Diagnosis they were dealing with. They seemed never to be far from that altar, in a track that prevented them from having serendipitous joy and the spontaneous lives they had known before.

They had forgotten how to smile, let alone laugh.

When I came home, my husband, Eddie, and I talked at length about this experience.  We knew what we needed to do. The support group had helped us make a choice to be effective and to become involved.  We had a big family and not so much outside time if we were to see that our son got into Boy Scouts and our eldest daughter got to piano lessons. And I was in school to become a nurse.

Although we cared deeply for our friends who needed to stay, we knew we were ready to leave the support group.  We chose not to build the altar. Whatever it was in the end that could explain Rachel's learning differences and small motor difficulties and a boatload of other struggles she had, we were going to be able to say that all of us went together to the mountains, camped, fished, hiked, sang in the car, and had a good time.

So we went across the nation to visit grandparents. We went to ballets at Christmas, visited Santa, played Ding Dong Dash to leave brownies and other goodies at our friends' homes, and attended innumerable school and scout functions. We visited orchards to pick apples for winter pies, and grew vegetables in the ample garden that we canned and froze.  We visited potato and onion sheds and put them away for winter as well.  We did just exactly what we had always expected we would do: we lived and loved  and laughed.

My youngest  brother had married a beautiful, wonderful girl, Allyn--right after her recovery from having surgery on her pituitary to remove a tumor. She brought a little son, Ian,  just adorable, to the marriage, and we were glad for Rob, since they knew she could not have children while taking the medicines she always would have to take after her surgery. No problem, they would adopt, we all knew, and meanwhile we would welcome our new nephew and grandson and cousin into the big, rambling  family.

Subsequently we transferred to Texas in search of a better educational and medical environment for Rachel.  Work brought Rob and Allyn as well. They built a life, a successful business and a house together in anticipation of the children they hoped to fill it with.

Our family had expanded exponentially in the 20 years since the picnics in the Rocky mountains.  They rolled right along with the rest of us into a happy mob, glad to be together often, most all of us in Texas now.  Finally the day came when two beautiful children arrived to complete their dreams. We all shared the joy in our brother's household.

But within months of bringing the babies home, our sister-in-law was having sudden, blinding headaches. She was admitted to the hospital where she learned her pituitary tumor had returned. The surgery involved untangling its' tentacles from her ophthalmic nerve.  She lost most of her vision her right eye immediately.

A truthful doctor did not give her long chances on retaining vision in either eye. Rob was at a loss for what to do. Her surgery had saved her life but her new life would be far different. Allyn thought mostly of her family and how her disability might  affect her ability to care for a newborn, a one year old, and a young teenager.

She told me, "I'm afraid they will take the children back!"  For a millisecond I could understand her fear, and then with clarity I looked through the prism of my early childhood. "No, that would  be ridiculous!" I assured her. "The government does not take children from their biological parents who happen to become blind, and you can be certain that will never, never happen here."

Rob called me, weeping with sorrow over her lost sight and their lost life together. They had done so  many things and now she was blind,  he said. Now they would never have the joy they had had before.  "Oh, yes you will," I said. "You are going to do everything you did before, only she is going to be blind. Remember Aunt Esther? Remember Dick and Barbara?"

They all knew how to laugh. Neither we nor they were diminished by their  presence on our adventures. We were all, in fact, enriched by sharing the time together.
 My brother did learn how to laugh again, but it required some considerable thought, planing, and effort. He shortened commutes to and from his outlying territories by learning to fly, and then bought a plane. Then he went further, making travel for work in the summer a family affair by purchasing an RV that brought the whole family together for trips that took them all over the nation. Just like at home, Allyn had good and bad days, but she was there, and when the days were bad, her bed was right there, too.  Nearly every picture we have of Allyn shows her damaged eye, yes, but it is eclipsed by the big, genuine smile of the moment.

Learning to relish the joy in life didn't make the serious problems of life go away, but it tempered the prism of light  through which he saw his burdens. It was not all sorrow, and there was a lot of fun and a lot of pure joy along the way.

Life continues to offer each of us challenges, many of which we feel inadequate to face, because we lack experience. Yet after we become experienced, we cannot help wanting to ease someone else's path. Finding the everyday fun is one of the best things we can do for one another It doesn't have to be slap-happy, just happy. Banish the altar of woe. Watch the Blues Brothers or a Youtube episode of Bat Dad. Make room for fun, plan for family time and guard it carefully. Bring friends along if they lift you up.

Don't be afraid. When I started laughing again, it felt funny.  I mean it felt weird to have the corners of my mouth turned up in a smile. I felt almost foolish, because I had grown so serious and resolute before.  God is  GOOD.  He wants us to enjoy our lives. Trust that He has this difficult, challenging situation, and that nothing bad will happen if you don't have all the answers now or later.

It will be like this:  You are going to do whatever it was you had planned to do before the challenges of life seemed to derail you. But God does have it. You can go ahead with your plans, resume your beloved activities that brought you close before.  And you are going to do it all while your loved one has health, mental health, or learning differences.  None of those things is going to take precedence in your life or the lives of your children. What matters is the laughter and the love and belonging you will

make along the way.

In loving memory of Deborah. She taught us all how to laugh..

My Grandfather Walker's Barn (c) Nita Walker Boles

When I remember Missouri, my mind touches only briefly on the road trips back there from Denver, to see our grandparents. It wasn't the trip we cared about. From the moment we entered the long, low burgundy Hudson Hornet we anticipated that final turn leading past a virtual hedge of irises down the long, graveled drive, past the tall canopy of a tree.  An empty wooden swing  beaconed a turn before we ascended the steps of their little cottage with two front doors.

Our grandmother kept a clean home, adorned with hand embroidered and crocheted table toppers, chair arm protectors, and pillow slips. There were always sweet cakes, and good, garden grown and canned food.The bacon and eggs served for breakfast were gathered and procured from the chicken coup and pig pen. 

She and our grandfather raised and put away nearly everything required to sustain themselves, and even into the early 1950's did it all without running water. A hand pump rested outside on the stump of a hardwood tree that must have been 15 feet in diameter, just outside the barn. 

Before our grandparents installed indoor plumbing, I required an escort to keep the geese from biting me as I made my way to the outhouse. It required someone old enough to assure that neither the geese nor the chickens escaped through Mamaw's gate.   

A few yards to the right as you entered were the wooden gates that defined the pasture and coral area of the farm.  Within a few steps was the massive and perfect barn, painted just the right shade of red rusty red. The door was open if Papaw was  doing his work, which was nearly alway, during the day.

Its' heavy beams seem to have emerged from the ground beneath them, a patina of age casting a golden hue over their sturdy wood grain from the light of the open stalls and doors..Those beams bore the hulking length, breadth. and height of what seemed to be an ancient inverted ark. 

It could have been. Papaw's animals did as he bade them in his murmured tones. He seemed to have two of every animal it its' own kind, so far as a farm could need.   The work area and the several stalls were purposed and economic. Papaw would tolerate neither filth nor disorder in his barn.  

But we were city kids, so we did not frequent the lower half of the barn, except as access to the loft.where we spent as much time as possible. With our nephews, who were more country kids, we enjoyed more of Christmas or Thanksgiving in the barn than at the house.

We ascended the stairs to the mammoth second story loft. A shaft of sunlight followed the lintel through the hay door,* illuminating the same kind of hay that Rumplestiltskin must have spun into gold.  High above our heads the gentle cooing of white doves assured the peace found there where the giant rafters came together as a steepled cathedral. Only a few times do I remember the boys ever being elsewhere when I stole there for sacred moments roo read a Louisa May Alcott book in that hallowed atmosphere.

But together, we were a troupe, and so far as we were concerned, the only purpose of the first story was so that we could reign above, and freely as kings and queens, or more often, as cowboys and Indians over our various territories.  The bales of hay, with quite a bit of effort when we were very little, could be pushed around to define borders  or to make rooms if playing house, or to make castle walls. 

Since the boys were younger than we were we could sometimes coerce them into playing house with our dishes and babies. They would first agree, but couldn't seem to get our serving them pretend food on our new dishes while we held our babies around the stomach on one hip. They looked quizzically at us as though we had lost our minds. If we had been better planners, we might have begged some of Mamaw's banana bread or rum cake to make them want to play girl-stuff with us longer. .  

If bows and arrows were part of the boy's booty, they would could work for a castle theme if we could persuade them.  But the most exciting and action-packed fun was, of course, based on the old West. If we didn't want to  have to  do dishes for hanging around the kitchen with the grownups who just wanted to talk and make us work, we had to blend in with the boys. 

So many a little boy and girl fell a casualty to gunsmoke. Although the boys might be the recipients of two pistols and a rifle complete with a hat and chaps, the girls made sure they lent what wasn't necessary to sustain their own lives in the gun battles awaiting. And considering the stakes---one could be kilt, shot daide, or at least wounded in the fray--all hands would be needed either as posse, gang members, or as Natives.

Our adventures took hours and even days. In one such battle, my little brother's gun fell from his hand into the baled hay, disappearing completely. Though I surrendered the second half of the pearl-handled 6 shooter set without his having to ask, his face showed his agony with tears held back.

We all abandoned our fun and searched for what seemed like hours. Finally we were called in for supper. When he told his tale of woe, no grownup offered to  help find the lost treasure. Subsequent searches while playing never yielded the treasure, and years later when our grandparents had grown too ill to keep it, no mention of the gun was made on the sale of the Edenic farm and barn. 

Just a few years ago, while reminiscing about that wonderful barn, my fifty-something, accomplished and successful brother looked wistfully into the distance and asked  "Do you suppose anyone ever found that gun?"

Post Script.

A few years ago I visited the farm on an anniversary trip with my wonderful husband, who drove me to Missouri and helped find the farm. I have pictures fifty plus years after these  events. The barn was made of wood and may have had tin over the roof--but I don't remember a tin roof, ever. But on our trip back, the entire barn enveloped in tin on the outside. 

The property, while inhabited, was not the ordered place we knew. But I ventured a peak inside the barn. The wood skeleton, stalls, and pens, were as I remembered them, the same hard woods still preservered but showing more age than I expected. I didn't go into the loft. but looking up at the ceiling which would be the loft floor, it appeared to be again, the same wood, aged.

Without condemning the owners at that time, I have to say, Papaw would never have stood for the disorder and decay I saw. But had Papaw lived on, and on in that same place, that same age, and maintained his barn and his idyllic life, nothing would have changed, would it? 

*Now, readers of the younger, helicopter generation, take heart. 

The open door of the barn loft was not a danger  to  us. We never fell out one. In fact we never got near one because we didn't want our parents to kill us if we survived the fall.  

Mary, my older sister, remembers there was  a rope to swing from on a rafter above, but Papaw must have put it up with all of us coming, worried there could be a hanging in the next episode.

 As for the cap guns, the grownups must have figured we would never make it from the house to the barn without discharging all the rolls of caps they came with. They seemed unconcerned that all that hay could catch fire up there.  And they never helped us at all with loading them properly so they wouldn't go off most of the time anyway. Maybe that's why the barn is still standing.

So you see there is nothing to worry about here.  

A stream of consciousness: My first awareness of how I fit in the universe. (c) Nita Walker Boles

For various reasons, change was our constant companion as I grew up.  Maybe we learned resilience because of it, but we considered it normal that we knew how to pack a house for moving. Within the first 8 years of my life we changed residences from the farm in Missouri to Kansas City, Missouri. Then we moved to a basement apartment somewhere in Denver for a brief stay before living for less than 2 years in the little cottage on Cherokee street, Then we moved to the house on East 12^th Avenue where we stayed about two and a half or 3 years, then to Josephine Street, where we lived for about two years before we moved on to Colorado Springs for the summer and autumn of my 3^rd grade schooling. But by Thanksgiving, to be specific, on my birthday, we had moved to Pueblo, where we would stay until the end of my seventh grade year. That is an average of once a year. It didn't seem so bad.

But my oldest sister, Nina, even as a young married woman, often stressed to us the importance of putting down roots. Beside God and our family, the only constant in our life was the beauty of Colorado. Over the years, reading the Bible as I saw my father do unpretentiously each day, and praying in my room at the end of the day, and when ever I felt the need for divine guidance, kept me close to God. 

Church was an adjunct to this constant practice of what I instinctively knew to do. Church was a place to gather with like-minded individuals. And to sing hymns of gratitude and of supplication to our Father in Heaven. 

We were rooted in our relationship with Him, and, so I suppose, all the early moving about was irrelevant.

We truly did have a rather nomadic existence. I was born on the farm in Missouri, near the Arkansas Ozarks.My earliest memory of Missouri, in fact possibly my earliest memory,  was of the green beadboard shelf on the back porch where the hand pump supplied water and my mother pumping it up into a basin. The beadboard was a milkwashed green and was the counter upon which the hand pump rested.  It is likely I remember it because it might have been a convenient spot to change diapers.

My grandmother Walker's farm diaries, written scarcely half a mile from the place of my birth, mentions towns like Neosho, Cape Girardeau as shopping destinations, or places to get an ice cream cone. She references events I was there for not because we lived there, but because we had come back to visit after our moves first to Kansas City and then Denver.

My single memory of Kansas City was throwing my older sister, Mary's china out the second story window, and laughing as they made a tinkling noise when they shattered below. My sister had soft, dark, curly hair and a dimple to rival Shirley Temple. She was kind and absolutely beautiful to my eyes. A lot of my childhood was spent studying her face and ways, admiring her.

I don't remember more than the look of disappointment, not anger, that I had broken her dishes—at least some of them. She just looked ruefully at me and did not cry when our Mother berated her for leaving them within my 18 month old reach.

The next thing I remember was the basement we occupied in Denver briefly before moving to the house at 603 N. Cherokee Street. There was a sailor who visited us—a relative? The son of the house's owner?---in the basement apartment. I remember being charmed by his white cap and uniform.

But I seemed to blink my eyes to find us in the house on Cherokee Street, and my beautiful sister was gone to school. I surveyed the neighborhood from my rusty tricycle, noting the different architectural features of each cottage along the way. It was all mine, every tree and shrub memorized along with the homes they complimented. Other people might have lived in them, but they were in my world, and I liked every detail, every fragrance, every noise, city or train, voices or rain. It was all for my delight and exploration.

It seemed just that our mother and father were beautiful and handsome, respectively. Mother was tall, willowy, and had campaign blonde hair. Daddy was cool before Boogie was cool. He sported the same hat, the same business suit as he went off to work, a cigarette inevitably between his index and middle fingers.

Mother explored the tables of fabric within short bus rides or walking distance of our home not far off Alameda street, and made clothing that rivaled any designer's for us, and for herself. We starred as models for her sewing club in a television advertisement. I remember the blaring lights, and having her hiss from behind a curtain, “Turn around!” and feeling foolish.

I shouldn't have. We were beautiful children in a happy little world of our own. Before I could read Fun With Dick and Jane, my peers were dressed, lived lives like, and looked like the characters from the beloved first reader series. Mother was close friends with Mary Walsh who lived across the street from us, and who had two boys about our same ages.

Our mothers also shared babysitting from time to time, and we happily ran through each other's houses. It was on one of those occasions that our mother discovered that the youngest of her friend's children was sick with a fever and a dreaded red rash. When she returned from her excursion, Mother remarked anxiously about the signs of measles, and was astonished to hear her say she knew he had them when she left.

Two weeks later, Mary, Mother, and I were all very sick with the Red Measles. Mother never forgave her.

We lived on Cherokee long enough for Mother to have disappeared for a few days while we stayed at Mrs. Walsh's house, and for her to return with a baby brother in her arms. When she finally put him down on a mat, I climbed onto her lap, a big lump in my throat. I was so glad to snuggle against her. She wore a navy blue silk dress with black spider webs woven to make a consistent pattern. She was beautiful, her hair well set, but I noticed her red lipstick needed freshening.

Mother and Daddy had guests, relatives I did not know then, but now believe to be Uncle Smitty and his daughter, Barbara, as they look in pictures like the people in my memory. I don't remember Aunt Jessie—maybe she had gone travelling, as she so frequently did. They watched our new brother, David, as he performed a number of amazing tricks, like raising his head and turning his face from one side to the other, his arms and legs spread-eagle. After a couple of stunts like that netted him coos of delight and approval from the adults in the room, I remember thinking, “Oh, David, you show-off!” and retreating in disgust at his basking in adoration.

The easily-charmed adults left eventually and we resumed normal life, but shortly our growing family was installed in a beautiful Bungalow at 630 East 12^th Avenue, just a block from the Governor's Mansion, and a short distance from the Capital. The home had been built in the 20's or 30's for someone who would have moved in important circles within the Colorado Capital Hill society.  

Azhar began renting from us, his quarters in the beautiful library upstairs, soon after we moved in. The warm wood that made up the bench, the stairs and landing, and all the railings and door and window frames also graced the shelves of the library.

When we couldn't go out front we played on the porch, which was enclosed the length of the living room, and bathed in milk-washed green paint. Both the outside front reception area of the porch, accessible from the entry, and the inside reception area were graced with benches to allow one to linger. 

The side walks were made of red sandstone or was it slate? They made a sort of crunchy sound when you walked on them. David was soon big enough to ride a bullet-shaped vacuum cleaner that was, to him, his train, and the joints of the red pavement made just the right noise to affirm his fantasy as he clacked along.

The outside steps were our seats when we were not permitted to go beyond the front gate during our bought with Chicken Pox. I believe all three of us at once. We also gathered our family there for a photo when it came time for Azhar to leave us and return to India.

There was a preschool program at Dora Moore elementary school, and at 3 I began my education, going several days or half days a week. At some point I was deemed big enough to walk the 7 or 8 blocks home alone. I don't know how I failed to get lost because I remember the walk was long and making turns at the right place to go home was essential.

It was about that time that I began also to have a stream of consciousness in which I was at church on Sundays. Mr. and Mrs. Sommers taught the Sunbeam class. We were 3 and we met in a room upstairs I believe over the baptistery in the old main building of Broadway Baptist Church in Denver.

Lining up to follow the Sommers to our classroom in the sanctuary behind the podium, amber stained glass streamed a kind of blessed light from above our heads. I felt warm and loved, certain that God loved me, and I smiled back up toward Heaven, thankful.

We learned the Bible stories, like Samuel in the Temple, and sang the songs like Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam, and Tell Me the Stories of Jesus. I never, never doubted God's interest in me, His Personal interest. I understood that God was our Heavenly Father, and that Jesus was our Savior, to Whom we owed gratitude and allegiance.

As soon as I could read for myself, I began to review the actual record in the Bible of the little stories we were taught in Sunday School and during Bible School in the summer. Very early on, I knew as I read them that God offered to me the same promises He had offered to Abraham and all his posterity in exchange for obedience to His laws.

I don't remember when I started to pray privately, but I did, fully expecting answers to my prayers. I knew God could communicate through thoughts, dreams, and impressions from my own experience, and through stories that trickled in from the experiences of other family members during significant times of their lives. These were just facts to me, then a little girl of 3, 4, 5, 6 years old. Absolute trust and faith in God.

A;though we were not spared adversity, we were blessed richly. Within a small circle from our various homes in the Capital Hill area of Denver were the Zoo and the Aviary, beautiful parks, such as Washington and Congress Parks, and the Museum of Natural History. Our parents took every opportunity to take us to these city places, and, no matter where we lived, to the natural refreshment found within the embrace of the Rocky Mountains.  

The world, my world, was a beautiful place. There were mountains, blue and green in the spring and summer, gold and red in the fall, and graced with pure white snow in the winters. Streams and rivers, rocks and trees proclaimed there was a God in Heaven. Birds, flowers, rain, snow, all the wonders of the world were evidence that He cares and that we have beauty to walk in.

A Christmas At Thatcher Elementary School

It was the second winter our family had spent in Pueblo, Colorado,  and Christmas was approaching.  Just in time for the approaching holidays, Mother had spotted an adorable pop-up paper scene, a Santa's Workshop complete with busy elves at work. Punch out tables and tools were put together with slots in sturdy card stock, and reindeer peered in the windows from outside.  It was so cute, I couldn't quit chattering to my art teacher about it. When she asked to see it, my mother proudly helped me disassemble it and pack it for the trip to school the next day.

When she saw the delightful scene, Mrs. Griffin's eyes widened with pleasure. "You're such an artist," she smiled, "wouldn't you like to help us make some of these to decorate for Christmas?"

Wouldn't I?

It was true I was an artist in my own right.Three years before, my second grade teacher had given us a busy assignment just prior to Easter, and suggested we draw a lady in an Easter Bonnet. She had gasped when she saw my art work, and scurried off to find another witness to verify the discovery of a budding talent. But when she asked me to duplicate it for entry into a showing at the library, I was unable to satisfy myself with an exact replica. The nose wasn't perfect, the iris not identical. The joy of the first creation was lost in the quest for perfection in repeating the act.

After countless wasted starts on the portrait, the teacher had gently suggested it need not look just like the first, and  I had sighed and produced what I thought was a much less inspired likeness. Neither picture ever made it home to  my mother, and I never learned what might truly have happened to them. I had noticed, though,  that  no one else in the second grade drew the bridge of the nose along with nostrils,  or the spokes of the iris when drawing the  human face. And their flowers didn't look real, either.

It would be decades before I realized they were probably keeping me busy with the Christmas Project, and possibly hoping to pinch an early production of my work, whether original, or copied from an overhead projector. Since all the way through high school, my best work never made it home, I just thought it was the nature of teachers to snatch up  the best portraits and renderings.

Getting done early with my classwork was the usual, so it was not a problem for the classroom teacher to lend me for hours for the big Christmas Project. It did take hours. The teacher would tape a 2 1/2 inch elf to the overhead projector and he would be 3 feet tall on the poster paper on the wall, where I first traced him and then filled in the details in complete duplication using tempera paints. I could mix my own colors, and they had to match as well as the details.

After several days of my need for perfection it became necessary to pull in a couple of helpers in order to complete the project before Christmas of that same year.  While I lost artistic control, and exclusive credit for production, my eagerness to see the 3 stories of central stair railings populated by elves, my elves, made any problems caused by artists less disciplined minor.

Soon  the vision of  Santa's Helpers, tools and toys in hand, running up and down the school stairs against a backdrop of greenery was a reality. The season, in which no memorable academic was preformed, was celebrated, beginning with our return from the Thanksgiving holiday and a trip to the long basement lunch room that also housed the piano and a buxom, middle-aged redheaded teacher.

Her repertoire seemed made up entirely of military camp songs, some of which predated the Civil War. We dolefully sang with her as she took us into the foxholes with our grandfathers, and great grandfathers, "Many are the hearts that are weary tonight, looking for the war to cease--many are the hearts that are looking for the right to see the dawn of peace." Her time must have been spent during her younger years with the USO or she would not have taught us "Gonna Dance with the Dolly With a Hole in Her Stocking".

But approaching the Christmas Holiday, we could expect the full range of tradition and what Broadway had to offer. She banged out that chorus, "Ho ho ho, who wouldn't go" with finesse that Norma Zimmer would have been obliged to applaud from her piano stool on the Lawrence Welk set. And we were jovial and eager to do our part,

She led us in an endless procession of hymns and tunes that she played without a glance at the sheet music when we called out our favorites. For me, "O Little Town of Bethlehem" must have drawn its' scenic inspiration for beauty from the streets of our own little town. Blanketed in snow and dressed in street lights, it was the epitome of George's version of Bedford Falls. Everything good seemed to happen here.

After all the preparation and rehearsals were completed, we awaited that last, wonderful day before we would be dismissed for the Christmas break. Some semblance of work was made, using the numbering  of ornaments on a page we had to color as an excuse for arithmetic. To facilitate our speedy exit from the building, report cards were handed out, and then we all gathered round the interior staircase that zig-zagged,  looking down on the library at the first level.

The piano  had been relocated for the occasion,  the kindergartners gathered round on the library level, and our smiling music teacher awaited hands poised on the keys for the first chords of "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas."  She looked up at us, gave a nod, and we were off!  We sang through what must have been twenty carols and  hymns before final announcements and good wishes were made.  Then we were ushered to our rooms to await the coming of Santa.

By the forth grade, we knew perfectly well that Santa was not real, but we anticipated his coming with the enormous red bag over his shoulder. Inside were paper lunch sacks, filled by PTA and Room Mothers, each with a hand made red or green tinted popcorn ball, several hard candies, a single candy cane, and a hand full of peanuts, roasted in the shell. What a deal! We could take it home to enjoy later, or begin self-paced consumption of the candy cane or popcorn ball on the spot.

The volume of the shrieks of excitement were increasing as Santa and his Helpers made their way up the levels. Our wait was longer, but no less rewarding.  When every hand held a gift, his work was done, and we were dismissed with the ring of that same bell that called us to the playground on balmy spring days.  Today we would don our snow boots and stomp pathways through shoveled snow for the joy of going knee deep.

We burst from the building, a goodie bag in one hand and our hard-earned report card in the other. Snowball fights would erupt along the way home, and hot cocoa would warm our freezing wet hands, gloves lost or forgotten in the rush.

In the days to come, the Christmas songs we knew by heart played in stores and on radio. Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby competed on our televisions for the most beloved or memorable seasonal songs. At church we joined  in hymns and  listened to or participated in special choral numbers.. At home, we sang around the piano as my sister, Mary, played. Our father and mother looked on  as warm flames danced in the fireplace, enjoying, truly enjoying some peace in their lives.

A Place in the Sun 1966 (c) Nita Walker Boles

If the New Mexico Desert had been a trial for us, the Yellow House Canyon and  Lubbock, Texas  was the matter-of-fact, unassuming and ample reward.  It would be up to us to discover what the treasure was that lay there for us.  For Mary, who never really lived there, Lubbock became the place where the rest of her younger siblings and parents lived as she entered her young adult life.  She moved on to the green and  graceful tree-lined streets of Ft. Worth and Arlington.

Our sister, Nina, and her husband, Donald, had a great 55 Ford ready for her to take to school, and they supplied the gas. They had just moved into a beautiful new home, so Mary had the use of a nice new room . Nina took on the job of seeing that she had the right clothes and shoes to wear.  Mary took meals with them when she could, and went to school on a student loan.

The rest of our family moved first into a little two bedroom rental home  near 34th Street, just down the block from our dad's sister.  The dining room became my room with the addition of the curtain partition that had traveled with us from Pueblo.  The boys had the small bedroom and my parents the large one. 

It was the second semester of my 9th grade year.  My two  younger brothers were wearing clothes, so I know they had some, and they didn't look funny to me, so what they had must have fit. No doubt they had their share of donated pants and shirts from cousins and other relatives.  Boys clothes were, at least for their ages, pretty generic: jeans and a tee shirt were adequate most places.

I had never thought of myself as a clothes horse. In fact, what I wore had been of so little concern to me that my mother had found it a challenge to get me to say what I liked. So I was beholden to her good taste for the nice wardrobe she usually sewed for me, and which I had once taken for granted. But as we began the new life in Lubbock there were no resources for new clothes, and the out-dated hand-me-downs fit, so I wore them.

I felt like a complete dork. I suddenly realized that Mod clothing had been my style. I had precious little of it now that I had grown out of nearly everything in the months since we left Colorado. What did fit was suited for winter in Colorado, and we were in the West Texas Panhandle. To offset the shortfall in current clothing, =I took a pair of scissors and gave myself a haircut rather like Twiggy's.  I did fine with the cut, but I still had those Brenda Lee style dresses to contend with, and I looked as much like I belonged in them as Twiggy might have. I wanted to disappear.

Not only that, but my transfer in had placed me in a position to be the ONLY girl in a science class that covered how a motor for a car was designed to work.I quickly assessed that the boys in that class had  developmentally arrested at the age of 12.  I was, to them, a girl with a strange accent and clothes from old television shows like Leave it to Beaver and Donna Reed. Being the gentlemen that they were and finding me  inexplicably on their territory, I suppose they did their best to make me feel at home. A freckled boy who had not hit his adolescent growth spurt sat in front of me. He disclosed to me the private name they had for our teacher, at the same time explaining to me reassuringly that she was really very nice. The other boys surrounding my desk nodded in agreement.

I was stuck on her nickname, and when I asked, Freckles gestured with his hands and nodded at her chest. I could see she wore a dress even older than mine, similar to those my own grandmothers wore, big and loose, covering her rather large bosom. I gasped in realization and put my face flushed, and I fell forward into my arms on the desk, humiliated for her and for me.

When my head came up I looked ruefully around me at the Martians, now focused on the firing mechanism of a piston. Someday, they would all pass for just a group of high school boys in a shop class. But for now, it was February and we would be done with the semester in June.

Freckles and the other Martians disappeared out of my field of vision as I focused on the clock.  How many hours and minutes until June?  I had learned to outlast the stuff you found incomprehensible, but this required going to another planet, and I was not prepared for that. Please, God, I prayed silently. I know they have requirements, but can you Please get me out of this class?

The girls at J.T. Hutchinson, down to the last one, were just as nice as could be, no matter how odd I must have looked. My growing list of kind and helpful friends expressed sympathy as I confided my plight  during P. E.  After conferring, they suggested I talk to the Science teacher~whose real name will forever be erased from my mind and supplanted by the glass Carnation containers that had once fit neatly into wooden compartments of  the pale green milk box on our front porch in Denver~yes, talk with her about letting me take Home Economics instead.

Miss Carnation, an understanding woman who patiently tolerated and overlooked the boys' crudeness--all of which was intended, but failing to be out of her earshot--promptly insured that my wish was granted, and returned to her work of directing their lowly thoughts toward the mechanics of things. But not before I passed a test demonstrating that I could correctly identify all the parts and purposes of  a V-8 motor.

Home Ec and Science were electives in the 9th grade curriculum. I had already taken home economics and was proficient, so the class was what we would call a 'yawner'.  The teacher was clearly not from a savvy cooking background.  My parents made their own biscuits, but canned biscuits were reserved for making home made doughnuts.  And anyone knew you did not freeze canned biscuits for future use, but not our teacher. She had found them on sale and decided to freeze them to have them available for the unit. My id was coming into its' own now, realizing that not all adults had all the answers. I was grateful not to have to prove I could sew a straight seam using a sewing machine for the third time. This was the third Junior High School I had attended. I could not wait to go to  High School.

The benefit of school, beside getting an education, was income. There was enough  change after buying a little lunch to save a little.  I  could begin the day with our usual farmer's breakfast and last easily on a ten cent ice cream bar, making the  rest of the money available for the purchase of Needful Things.

Mother's portable stereo record player had traveled with us from Colorado, and while located for anyone's use, it was used mostly  by me.  I had a  limited number of Beatle albums, a few of my oldest sister's variety albums with top ten hits of   previous years, and a growing number of 45 rpm singles.  Although I don't remember ice cream bars as the lunch alternative,  I do know that I bought a few 45's during the 6 months or so that we lived near Wayne's Records. Wayne's was only a few blocks' walk. We still had the old plastic radio and the hits of the '60's were not wasted on the home of Buddy Holly. Rock and Rockabilly embraced Folk and the British invasion in Lubbock, Texas, where music came with the West Texas pioneers.

At school I was for the first time beginning to appreciate Texas history. I still wrote my friends in Colorado, and less often my English pen pal, but life in Lubbock was beginning to busy us with Saturday milk bottle top movies and trips to the Library. And when that semester finished we very quickly moved into a home of our own, with much better living arrangements.

I had a real bedroom of my own for the first time in my life. I had the use of the nice French Provencal dressing table and drawers. The double bedstead had disappeared somewhere during the last two moves. . Mine was a nondescript twin, and I don't remember the bedspread, or the curtains. But at night I was alone in my own room with a door to close, where I could lay and pray up through the ceiling to the God who held my life and future in His hands. I knew He was in charge of the chaos that life was, and that from it He would somehow wring order and meaning to it all. I just talked and He listened.  Although I didn't have big questions, sometimes I would get impressions about what I should do about something.

The boys were out in the small converted garage with the gas water heater that had a faulty pilot light. While I knew my parents checked it frequently, and that my dad had tried to "fix" it, with the wind always blowing in Lubbock, I was constantly checking it.  It was really the opening and closing  of the outside door that frequently blew it out during daylight hours. I had a keen sense of smell and after bed time I would sometimes get up at night o make sure it was lighted. I suppose that must have driven the decision to call the gas company to have it fixed.  There was a window exit, and after the gas company "fixed" it, the outside door remained closed and locked from the inside. 

Mother would call a taxi  that would take her, along with Rob if we were in shool, to her Avon  territory  She would prearrange a pick up time and place for later, if possible, and if not, Rob said, she would politely ask to use a phone to call her cab. Rob would sit reading or quietly playing with a pocket toy on the front steps as she sold her wares to the lady of the house.

In a short while she had enough money to buy a used car.  With the means to get to a paying job, she added work at a doughnut shop for $1 an hour, where she brought home everything she could from the day-old rack. While it did not take me long to get tired of stale pastry, the boys devoured  put in front of them. In a short while she was working at Montgomery Wards in the sewing department.

I became assistant, if not chief cook and bottle washer at the house that summer. After school if Daddy was not there to start supper, I cooked and cleaned and watched my youngest brother, Rob.  David, just two years younger than me, had the freedom to roam the neighborhood and went about making friends. For myself and Rob, there were some trees to climb and a park nearby. And although we had little time to visit,  I had gotten to know the girl across the street a little that summer.

I had moved so many times that I couldn't remember exactly where I knew people from, and their names refused to take a permanent hold in my mind. For the rest of my life, learning and retaining names became an embarrassing struggle. I had to associate closely with someone to feel I knew them and could remember their name. Perhaps if I didn't know too many people I wouldn't lose too many of them. Making new friends was slow for me.

A new school, Lubbock High School, was ahead for me. Everyone would be new in some way, since several Junior High Schools fed into the huge Spanish Revival building.  So everyone would be making new friends. My one friend across the street so nice, and the kids at Hutchinson had also been so nice that I was sure that Lubbock High would be just fine.

God was in  His Heaven, and Mother's  job at Wards was a blessing to us all.  Her deftness with a sewing machine, sophisticated look, and outgoing personality were just what they wanted in that part of the appliance department. She  brought home some material for me to sew into a skirt and provided a matching sweater. I began to like looking at patterns and material for the first time in my life! The anticipation of anything nice and new to wear was worth the trial of figuring out how it went together.. And  for the best backup plan, Mother was working feverishly to sew model outfits for the manikins to display that she would later buy at cost for us to wear. A few more additions to the wardrobe made sure I was Mod again! Transformed, tucked away into my own room at last, I anticipated High School, hardly guessing at the experience that waited ahead.

And every night I lay in bed, eyes directed into an unseen heaven, no longer weeping for the friends and home we knew in Colorado.  Instead, I was talking about my day with God, content enough with where my life  was  to be happy and hopeful before falling off to sleep.

NBB, Queen of the Universe, or how our eldest sister saved us from ourselves (c) Nita Walker Boles

I.

Long ago, in a far-off land lived a family, a third family made from two others, in which older children were banished by cruel circumstances but not forgotten by either their families or by the Goodness of God, who makes all things to turn for good if we will just allow it. As children of that third family, we knew that among our older siblings, in the Hinterlands of Texas, lived an older Sister named Nina, who was, by all rights, Queen of the Universe.

Mary remembered her well, from the time before she went away. When she heard that Nina was getting married, she asked Mother if she could be the Flower Girl. Within minutes, Nina was on the phone, saying she and Donald had just gotten married. Mary was disappointed, but I had no idea what they were talking about. In fact, I was so into picking flowers on the way home from school that it was about the best I could do to find my way home. I was too little to really remember much about my oldest sister before I saw her again, but it seemed that when they did get together, she and our Mother were talking the entire time they were together. 

 

And any time she was expected to visit, there was a cleaning of the house like no other time. Linens were pulled from the shelf, re-washed, organized, and replaced. Everything was removed from the kitchen cabinets, the cabinets washed out, and everything cleaned again and replaced. The usual Saturday cleaning was re-done five times over, and the refrigerator cleaned and the freezer defrosted. 

 

You would think the Queen was coming. And she was! So while we were little kids going to school, she was a grown-up with a complete life that included being Hollywood Pretty while excelling at everything she did, having a Dashingly Handsome Husband, and maintaining a Stylish Home. Even their dog was named after a fairy-tale character, Wolf.

On her visits to our home, she periodically grabbed one of the younger of us and straightened a collar or skirt too far a-kilter for her to tolerate while continuing her grown-up conversation with our Mother. She seemed insistent that anything we do be done right, so a look of satisfaction or a little smile with a nod of approval from her was a great reward.

I remember one potato salad under production in our kitchen in which my job was to peel the skins from the boiled potatoes. I seemed to have trouble getting the skins to slip off, and after a while she quietly took them from me, still conversing with Mother, and magically slipped a manicured nail beneath the brown skins, zipping them off within moments. She could make ordinary tasks look amazing when she performed them with such ease!

One Christmas she came with bags and boxes we eyed with excitement, and on Christmas Eve, eager to get in on the still-proceeding conversation with Mother, I walked into the back bedroom to find them wrapping toys. I spied the Monopoly game.

“Wow! Who gets the Monopoly game?!!” I exclaimed.

 

Nina's hands became the wings of a White Hen, her clucking voice and waving arms shewing me from the room and blocking me from getting a view of the other treasures askew about the room. I sulked back to rearrange the ornaments on the tree, muttering that Mary Beth would probably get the Monopoly game anyway. But on Christmas morning, it was MINE! Nina's little smile of satisfaction was brief, but I caught it when I said enthusiastically, “Thank you!”

II.

When it came to clothing and hair, there was no higher authority (except, on occasion, our Father) than Nina. When there was a doubt about what to wear or whether something fit right, it was whether or not it required her tugging, straightening, arranging, or pulling that determined its' fitness. She was as confident as our Mother in what she wore herself.

Conversely, when she visited one year, her hair long but piled into a sophisticated 1960's bubble on top of her head I heard Daddy musing to Mother about her hair: “Whatever that beauty shop is using on her hair is stripping the color from it!” Like all parents who think their children are perfect just as they are, he hated to see anything change about her natural beauty.

As for us, we were like a bed of unruly weeds with the uncontrollable habit of growing, and requiring a complete renewal of wardrobe every fall. When times were lean we were sometimes sent to her house for “outfitting” which might include both trips to the best department stores or finest dry goods places for purchase of the latest patterns and materials. Our school year was certain to go better when Nina had contributed to dressing us.

Although my closet was amply stocked with fine sewing done by our mother, I stood by with envy to watch the front yard photos of my older sister's fall wardrobe being made the year she entered Centennial High School. Mary came home after a visit to Nina's with a new wardrobe selected and sewn in excellent taste.

One summer when Six Flags had opened we went to visit Nina, then at her new home in Arlington. Upon inspection of our cut-offs and tee shirts, Mary and I were taken to Titches where Nina bought us cute little cotton-knit short shorts and tops by Aileen in colors that reminded me of sherbet.

Robert remembers being dressed in Bermuda shorts, a blazer, and a red cap and having the distinct feeling that he might look like a “Sissy” but also knowing it was futile when Nina had spoken to protest. Mary and I knew we looked good, so any noises Robbie made around us were going to be muffled because we revered the judgment of the Queen of the Universe. David must have had a shirt and shorts or pants that passed inspection, because he only remembers that it was hot when we went to Six Flags.

Before the start of my Junior year of High School I was lucky enough to spend a week with Nina. Among the prizes I went home with were two (Titches or Cox's) store-bought mini-dresses that our father would never have allowed me to wear. When I appeared in the the living room wearing one on the first day of school, Daddy said flatly, “You are not wearing that.” I looked straight at him and said, “Nina got it for me.” He blinked first. My poker face and bravado bought me the use of the dress until my sweaty friend borrowed it and I could never get her B.O. out of it again. The other of the two was worn again and again until it was too pilled to be nice enough.

III.

High school was a not a finishing point. It was well-rehearsed to us by our mother that while our father had finished high school, she had sorrowed all her life that the school bus had stopped coming near enough to her father's farm for her to complete her final year of public school. It was a foregone conclusion that we would not only finish high school, but make good enough grades to qualify for some sort of scholarship help to deliver us a college education.

Nina was the shining example for us, returning to school at TCU to complete her Bachelors' degree in Nursing. As teenagers we were acquainted with her college buddies, all nice girls, smart and savvy. They were, for us, a reference point that we could make for the kinds of friends one could choose for oneself.

 

She later proved to us that you aren't finished till you feel finished by completing her Master's Degree in Nursing at TWU. She taught, lead in her field, and finished her career working for the State of Texas certifying  and  investigating hospitals and home health agencies among other health care providers. 

Watching the few years it took for her to complete her degree and then advance in a stellar career made us certain this was what we could and should expect to do for ourselves. Less than a college education would forever have been unacceptable to us, and we never felt finished with our education until we finished our education. So the four of us all went to college, some finishing with Bachelor's degrees and others with Masters, while some with lesser degrees but achieving success in our fields.

Some of us have served our country in the military. Some have owned and managed their own successful corporations. Some have worked in high level management positions, and some have addressed Congress and have spoken to Admirals, and international authorities as advocates for life-saving measures.

IV.

As a young girl, I watched as my older sister and her adoring husband bantered and played, always showing genuine and open affection for one another. They were the model of true love for one another. Good humor and tandem effort toward their individual and mutual goals showed us what was possible in a great marriage. If Nina was the Queen of the Universe, then Donald, the King, was the unassuming example of loyalty and hard work.

Good books, music, the arts, history, all a continuation of the home we were raised in were woven into the lives of our older sister and her husband. The love and acknowledgment of God was an undertone but never a lecturing point in their conduct. Their examples of grace as friends to others and as ever-present family members for us gave us the reference point we have for belonging to and helping others to belong. Nina often spoke about the value of having and “putting down roots.” How different our lives would have been without them to show us the way.

V.

It is now many years since the first visit to Six Flags over Texas. Our sister, Nina, still reigns Queen. The home that she and Kind King Donald have made has been the gathering place for our family now for three generations. 

Donald serves up grilled hamburgers and sage advice seasoned by wry observations with generosity to his nieces and nephews. He dons an apron to bake in the winter, cookies and breads, cakes and other delicacies to give to friends and families as they share the blessings life has brought them.

 

Nina's hands are never still. She embroiders and sews the fabric of our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren. No baby is born without something made beautifully for the day of their blessing. Heirloom stitchery is tucked away in tissues for generations to come.

With the coming and going of so many people, two dogs quiver for attention, afraid the parade of guests might take away the affection normally lavished on them when the King and Queen would be theirs alone to enjoy.

When we go from the Castle on Stagecoach Drive, we leave happily to return to our own homes, satisfied that we have at last met the Queen's approval, glad that our children and their children have had an audience and enjoyed a banquet of goodness within those walls.

Epilogue

Once upon a time there were two different families that became a third. Perhaps it was because among the children of the first two, there was at least one young Queen who chose to make a world for herself in which the children of the third family could also grow strong and happy, that the story ends Happily Ever After.

God on my Shoulder Part 2: Leaving Colorado Behind (c) Nita Walker Boles

There are ways taught with nuances and without direct intention. Not that my parents would not have intended to teach me about God, because they did. But there were hundreds of lessons to learn in every day life, with reverence for life and all that was good in it. The scene that met us every day after school was the one of our father, who seemed never to be far from us, reading from the Scriptures. It was long into adulthood that I learned from my youngest brother that  he had actually arranged life that way.

"No, no," Rob heard  him talking on the phone. "I really can't meet at that time.  I have kids that get in from school, and I need to be there." Oh, so it was no accident. "I can meet with you in the evening," he suggested.
Most of his appointments were  made during the day while we were at school or during the evening when we were settled in and working on our homework. Mother was home from work by that time, so she took over from there as Daddy went out the door to meet some steel worker or ditch digger who wanted to be sure he could at least pay one day for his own burial. It was a burial policy, one that provided for the cost of a funeral, that my father sold. Poor men who worked hard did not want to become a burden, even in death, on their families.

Mother orchestrated everything to do with our extra curricular activities, including attendance at church and Girl Scouts. My sister and I walked a couple of miles to be at a choir practice when we lived in  Colorado Springs to find they  had cancelled and word had not reached us. Fortunately for us a nice brother from the ministry happened to   be there and took us back home in his car, astonished that we would go to such trouble to be there. We were learning a beautiful  hymn, "I Am Satisfied with Jesus" which included the American Sign Language version. I remember most of that song in sign language today, and sometimes think on the words, " I am satisfied with Jesus. He has done so much for me.  He has suffered to  redeem me. He has died to set me free.  I am satisfied. I am satisfied. I am satisfied with Jesus. But the question comes to me as I think of Calvary, is my Master satisfied with me?"

So you see, not all that we learned at church was full of condemnation, but raised questions of  how we might improve ourselves to be fit for Divine company. There were many, many good people and good clergymen within the church. Our time there was full of memorization of key scripture passages and of stories that likened us to people in the Bible.  In reading the Old Testament stories of children and young people who interacted directly with God the Father, it did not seem impossible for one in our place and time to experience similar things.  Yet, obedient to scripture, we did not seek "for signs".   We did, however, snuggle into the comfortable arm of the Lord, expecting each new day to bring another wonder or miracle in plain site, because, that is really how we saw it. Life was joy.

In Girl's Auxillary we memorized still more scriptures, receiving small mementos as recognition for our efforts.We continued to sing in the choir, stayed active in the youth group. It was a good life, always framed in Biblical context, with the understanding that our lives lay before us with the Lord at the helm.

We would not happily nor willingly get on the ship that took us to the deserts of New Mexico, though. We had lessons in comparison and contrast regularly in the trips we took at least twice a year there. We could endure the holiday away from home just so we got to go  home, but New Mexico, did not feel like home for us.

Our older brother, Jack had scarcely beaten cancer in the previous year, our father having spent more than we had to travel in his worry over his son, and the economy failing. Our eldest brother, Son, and our father's cousin were convinced Daddy could return to farming and support us well enough. Daddy was a hard worker and a willing and experienced farmer, but the terms would be simply sharecropping. He would be bringing his wife and family of four children ranging from 4 to 17 to support, and  had not a dime to invest. We had lost the house in Pueblo, and we would be starting over. 

So the day came when the household was packed, the beloved piano still standing in the living room for want of space on the truck.  I don't remember any of it, but I know we loaded the truck, carrying boxes we had packed with our dishes wrapped in dishtowels and other linens. Whatever furniture we had for bedrooms went, the beautiful oak dining set, our kitchen table and chairs. As we drove away I tried to look at every tree and house  for the last time. Soon my gaze fell on the river and the mountain range.

In the truck ahead of us, our father was telling our brother, David about a dream he had the previous night. That day was June 7, 1965. A few drops of rain had started to fall, and he told how he had dreamed of a flood that overspilled the banks of the Arkansas river into the downtown area of Pueblo. Remarkably, when we later unloaded our truck and set up the television, the national news carried pictures of the flood in Pueblo our father had dreamed about the previous night. Perhaps his premonition of  that disaster was an affirmation for us that rough times would not  have been avoided had we managed to stay in Colorado. For we children were openly heartbroken. 

Where we were going was not an unknown to us. We had been to the plains of New Mexico visiting our complicatedly random family for what seemed like a thousand Thanksgivings and Christmases. But then we had always had the luxury of leaving the starkness of the cactus covered sand behind.

But by the time I was 13 and able to form my own opinions about preferable vacation spots,  it was not especially enchanting to visit the Land of Enchantment.  The desert was the tumbleweed  home to countless sulfuric oil wells that provided paying jobs for younger men than our father. Doubtless they would otherwise be tilling the soil for cotton or maize, the other cash crop. There were  a few cattle, but the brittle land would not support herds in numbers to compare to those in  less arid areas across the border, in Texas. 

After the 12  hour drive from Denver, we found ourselves parked in front of a small two bedroom frame house in the middle of a field of maize outside Lovington, New Mexico.  A windmill creaked on the tower behind the  house Within a few hours we had unloaded our furniture, put away the dishes and pans, and set up beds.

Our mother, one of the most resourceful women I have ever known, declared one end of the living room a Master bedroom. By standing one dresser on top of another she created a buffer zone that separated their room from the living area. Mother used the same curtain that had partitioned my bedroom from the den area of our basement in Colorado. Strung  on a clothesline across the back end of the living room it allowed a bit of  privacy.  The two boys were in one bedroom and we girls in the other. We were comfortable enough if our parents were consigned to the least desirable space. I was 13 that summer as we arrived and would turn 14 before the year was up. My brother, David was 11. My sister, Mary, was 17. And Rob, the youngest, was 4.

We almost immediately began the planting of a garden, from which we canned every single thing not required to feed us immediately. David went to work with Daddy every day. It was not child's  play. He rode on the back of combines, dangerous work for a little boy. Anything the men did he also did to the best of his ability becoming muscled, tanned, and weary.

He later told how he witnessed the look of worried care growing on our father's face. The economics of raising a family were unknown to my brother, but he recognized the edge in our father's voice when he told his cousin that he was "sick to his stomach with worry" over how we would make it.

To buffer us from the trials around us, Mother made sure we had the chance to go to Bible School for the week when they held it.  So David had a reprieve from farm work for that time. It was a relief for us to hear familiar music and have scripture read that we recognized.

"I was glad when they said unto me 'Let us go into the House of the Lord'." We memorized more verses: "The Lord is my light and my salvation:  Whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life.Of whom shall I be afraid?"

"Make a  joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.  Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord  He is God.  It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep in His pasture.  Enter into  his courts with singing and into his gates with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endureth to all generations."

"Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not to thine own understanding."

These verses, though seemingly simple, would become the place we could go in our hearts. when things seemed hopeless and depressing.

That fall some of the winter clothes I had from the previous year still fit. Although Mother was the best with a sewing machine, she did not have many resources to provide us with anything new as the new school year began. David was on free lunches at school.  I continued to ask Daddy every day for lunch money. He would dig in  his pockets and come up with a little change for me and I would thank him. Unbeknown to me, my sister did not ask and was not offered money to eat on. Why David was getting free lunches and we were not I will never know. Our mother must have assumed if she had filled out some paperwork that it applied to us all. Nevertheless, Mary went to school each day with no money in her pocket.  Two very nice girls befriended her and made sure she ate every day by going back for seconds at lunch time.

To say that we hated being there would be an understatement. The culture was something we could not  understand. It was as different as Country music and Rock and Roll.  We were thinking about the Beatles, and few of our contemporaries there knew who they were.  We treasured the few friends we made who also listened to Simon & Garfunkle.  We were out of place. We wrote letters to our old pen pals in France and England and added our old friends from Colorado.  Anxious for word from "home", the reports of life in a place that was becoming increasingly irrelevant were meaningless and empty for both my sister and I.

Gradually the connections to Colorado were being shorn away. A youth hayride at church turned out to be in the back of a cotton wagon. There were bales of hay, all right, but the cage around us was covered with cotton burrs and lint. Because it was fall I  had worn my black and white hounds tooth pleated skirt and a  black cable knit sweater. Although they fit comfortably I could not wear them again because I couldn't get the lint out of them.

Our Midwest accents and mannerisms were more foreign to them  than their Southern drawls and boisterous ways were to us. Because we had grown up with those differences within our own family, we were naturally more accepting of the local kids than they were with us. They weren't going to change and it was up to us to adapt. Friendships came slowly.  My closest friend suffered from a birth defect that left her eyelids partially closed. Her father worked the fields and oilfields, and she told me, could not afford the operation needed to raise her eyelids out of the field of obstruction. Consequently she kept her head tilted slightly back to see, but self-conscious, not enough to see well. Her neck must have always been sore.  She had few other friends. Another girl, there from California, was as different from the local kids as I was, and as different from me than them. Being all different, we made a society of three.

Still, every night I prayed for the Lord to package us up and send us back home. When we crossed the highway that lead north, I imagined the straight ribbon as it traveled, gradually ascending to the plateaus and foothills and went  past the Sangre de Christo mountain range. I imagined going back to our home, our friends, our life now gone. I cried enough in the middle of the night that Mother had to have heard me.

To help clothe us, Mother had gone to work at an Anthony's department store on the square and she brought bargains she found on the sale rack now and then to stretch our wardrobes. Although it almost never rained, she brought me a matching lined raincoat and umbrella that must have been marked far below value. The raincoat served more practicably as a light jacket since all I had was a heavy winter coat, seldom needed in the fall on the plains.

One day she brought me a little gold toned necklace that had the Serenity Prayer on it.  While we were completely unfamiliar with Alcoholics Anonymous, the message in the prayer was particularly applicable to me:  'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  Amen.'

She offered the necklace to me without explanation. When I read the message, I felt grateful for her compassion, and for the first time stopped blaming my parents for what had seemed like a catastrophe.

That winter was the worst time I ever remember. Sometimes there were no beans to go with the cornbread our mother made.  We  had soup made from a combination of every vegetable we had canned that summer, and made more substantial with macaroni. The slimy canned squash was my favorite to hate. My brother says that to this day, he cannot stand potato soup and will not eat it.  But I loved the potato soup in comparison to the slimy vegetable soup we had to eat. At Christmas a relative brought a ham.

I don't remember much else about Christmas there, but I know that we we were packing for a move by February. Working as a sharecropper was not going to feed  us. My prayers had been answered differently than I expected.  We were moving to Lubbock, where Daddy hoped to find work once again selling insurance,  something he was always to find success with.

I was glad to be going, but it seemed as though our family was always morphing and changing, and someone was always being left behind.  My sister had attended two years of high school in Colorado and a half year in New Mexico. Mother had asked one of the aunts in Lubbock to see whether Mary could transfer her credits and graduate that year, but it seemed that there would be some problem with not having taken Texas History or something like that.

In any case, Mary stayed behind, living with our brother, Jack, and his wife, Mary Ann. Her friends continued to insure that she ate at school. I remember being there when we said goodbye to her at our brother's house. She was silent. My stomach hurt. I asked her if she was going to be OK there and she nodded her head. I never considered switching places with her because there wasn't a reason for it. I felt guilty running out on her, but she stood there, her face a studied mask of self-control,  and we left her there.  There were no tears, just an impossibly large lump in my throat.

I was now the oldest of the three of us that remained at home.  I didn't see Mary again until she came through Lubbock in the summer on her way to  live with our oldest sister, Nina, while she attended TCU in Ft. Worth.  She stoically moved forward, and it would be years before we began to talk about the hardship of that time. But between us it was understood that God was ever there, and would help us navigate through the waters ahead.