Fate, Faces, Friendship. and Futures

Many "F" words  (not necessarily those from street vernacular) confront one during the passage known as living. Ironically, and it truly is an irony, all those words have a connection and that connection is not the expected and predictable union. Interested? Follow my rambling thoughts for a while.

Lets start with felines.  My birth sign is Leo, the lion(ess). If you are astrologically interested or inclined, feel free to research the sign.  It is easily accessible, thanks to the internet...but that really doesn't have much to do with my story. So, here goes.

It was a chilly, but not cold, and rainy March night. As a family. we had dealt with a devastating house fire, the death of  Bradley, my  autistic son, as a result of that fire; living for two and a half weeks in two hotel suites (three adult sons and two parents) and on that day...we had moved into  a three bedroom rental house. Thanks to our homeowner's insurance and a long time neighbor (a real estate agent) we were finally under one roof.  C.J. was in the master bedroom unpacking whatever clothes we had managed to replace and our three sons were in various spaces...trying to organize their possessions (fourth son was away  in college). The storm outside increased in strength...as proved by the increased sound from the rain hitting the metal awnings over the windows and the back patio cover.

C.J. yelled.....I was to come quickly..he saw a raccoon just outside the window!  I remember thinking...you have got to be kidding....I've never seen a raccoon in a window...or anywhere off the ground..unless he was up a tree. I went to look. Sitting on the outside window ledge was a fairly large furry  gray animal. "No," I told him. "that's no raccoon.  Looks like a cat to me."

He was sure it was a bobcat then....I assured him that whatever it was..it was a domestic cat.  Grumbling that he had never seen a cat that big...he was sure I was wrong...so he called the three sons in to look. The resulting consensus......it was a cat. He closed the window and the curtains...still grumbling.

Next day....I looked across the street and saw this huge gray cat sitting  on the curb grooming its fur. As the week progressed...I talked with a couple of the neighbors and found out that the street  had an uusually large number of cats who were thrown out, kicked out, dumped, and thrown away by their previous "owners."  The huge gray was a "dumpee" who had appeared a few weeks before. Sincce we had lost our cats as a result of the fire (one died, the tom cat ran away) I was not pleased. Then I went down the hill to the dollar store....we needed canned dog food for our elderly lab mix (who managed to escape the fire along with her wild son) so,  before I left the store..I bought some canned cat food.

The next night...I opened a can of food and left it on the porch for the stray gray. Though I never saw  her eating , the can was empty next morning. By the next weekend...she would come out of whereever she hid at night....when she saw me come out of the house with her food. She wouldn''t come too close...but she seemed to understand that she would find food and eventually water...on the corner of the porch.

March is a funny month...especially weather wise. A cold snap came along and one evening  when I came from work and parked in the driveway...the gray was sitting on the corner of the porch near where ahe was fed...looking at me...just looking. That evening..I looked back and said to her, "Aren't you tired of being out in the cold?" I opened the door, "Come on in this  house!"  She looked at  me as if she understood, stood up and regally walked in ahead of me. Once inside, she flew through the house and hid under the futon  where my older son slept.

From then on, she would ask to be let out early in the day (with the lab), We wondered where she went...but she wss always back at night. Then one day...C.J. saw her walking along the sidewalk. He got in his car and drove slowly down the street...shadowing the gray. She walked the half mile to the end of the street (which deadended into a corn field), looked around carefully, then slowly and sadly walked back to the rental house. It was obvious,,,she was looking for her  people...but she never found them. Every night (for months) she would come back to us to be fed, sheltered, and by that time loved.

When we moved from that rental....the boys wrapped her securely in a towel and got in the car with her and when they got to our new residence...she was presented with her food dish, her water bowl and her own litter box. At that point...she finally realized that whereever we lived, she lived, and we were her people.

That was eleven years ago, Smokey knows she is home but there are still days when she "tests" us. She will run out of the house...go about ten feet from the door....stop and roll in the grass...then look to see if we are coming to scoop her up to take her back in the house. She is never disappointed.

Remembering Linda

Sixteen years ago I met a high school freshman who, for the purpose of my story, I will call Linda. She was barely five feet tall and had a quiet little girl voice. Before long I found out that for most of her life, she had lived in a nearby city…until the spring before…when the court had placed her with a family in the neighbor hood surrounding the inner city high school where I worked. Linda was NOT a social student…I don’t ever remember having to ask her to listen quietly or pay attention. As she grew more comfortable with her surroundings, Linda opened up just a little….but, her focus was always on her school work.

School was a challenge for her. As the year progressed, her educational gaps became apparent. I pulled her school file and discovered that she had been to many different schools and that continually her instructors noted the lack of parental involvement. I was to discover that Linda was basically her own parent….not because she lacked a parent….because her mother was and had habitually been a drug user who more often than not ended up on the street. Linda, at 15, was a streetwise child struggling not to end up as her mother had. I don’t know where she lived during the first half of her sophomore year in high school but she was back with our school the second half of the year because I looked up one day as she walked in to my home room as a “transfer” student.

Her grades were not the best, but she rarely missed school. Sure, there were days when she hit my classroom closet at lunch time, but she was not alone. Many of my home room girls did the same. The closet always had “stuff,” stuff like peanut butter cracker packs, cheese cracker packs, microwave popcorn, pre-packaged juice packs, etc. along with paper cups, hot chocolate mix (that I mixed and put in a sealable canister) . There was usually a basket on my desk that many days held fruit…..and other such “illegal, contraband.” The girls knew my rules..if you find it, you can have it, reseal the container you opened, clean up any mess, tell me when you need more cups, keep the coffee pot full of hot water and don’t tell anyone out of this home room what is in the closet.

During my “off” period , if you need a quiet place to do your homework (and you do NOT have a scheduled class) , you are free to come into the room and work and listen to quiet music (I taught a foreign language along with English so my boom box/tape/CD player was part of my standard (personally owned) equipment. Linda was often there…sometimes to finish homework….many times to put her head down and catnap. By that time, I knew she was living out on her own and working at the gas station down the street. By junior year…many kids were out on their own…living in questionable conditions…in rooming houses…in apartments …wherever they could find a “safe” haven. I knew that some children were “push outs,” simply put out by their “parents” or “families.”

Linda, on the other hand, was a foster child caught in the situation where she was 18 by senior year. There was a program where these kids received a stipend for living expenses if they were high school seniors and actively trying to finish school. Combined with a somewhat meager pay check, Linda had rented a small apartment. True, the apartment was in a crime ridden neighborhood….but it was HERS. There had been a boyfriend involved but she had decided to end the relationship. The why and wherefore of the bust-up…I do not know. Graduation was less than two months away.

Linda had the weekend off from work and she decided to contact her mother. I would guess that she wanted to tell her mother about the child she was expecting…but I really do not know. The mother came from the town where she lived (caught the bus) and apparently was excited that Linda had her own place and would soon graduate from high school. The weekend was not to go as expected.

The angry ex-boyfriend showed up to confront Linda. He showed up with a gun and shot Linda on the sidewalk in front of the apartment. Then he ran….while Linda was dying in her junkie mother’s arms.

The news traveled through the school community like a too sharp knife. On Monday morning, the two faculty members who were “class sponsors” called an emergency meeting. The message was this….you are Linda’s family…you are her brothers and sisters…and as her family…there is only one thing you can do for her. The class was told…it is up to us to bury her..that is all we can do. It was spring and the flowering bushes outside the school were in bud. I had broken off a small limb and held it up before the class.

“This large branch represents you as a class. A thief came in the night and stole a budding flower from this branch, “ I snapped off a small branch, “a flower which was Linda.” The students were told what a “proper funeral” would cost. Within two days, by gathering nickels, dimes, quarters, dollars from each other and from the neighborhood…the students had raised the money and dispatched the principal to the funeral home to pay.

On the appointed day and the time, school busses pulled up in front of the school and the entire senior class climbed on the busses to go bid farewell to their classmate and as they marched out of the building, they warned the underclass students, “If you all come, you all better act right…because this is our sister!”
That spring was almost 13 years ago. Linda’s child would have been nearly 12 years old this fall….the school building has been torn down and replaced…and those of us who were her teachers have retired and/or moved on. I still feel her loss and I often wonder…what could we have done,,,to keep Linda…alive?

The Apple Tree Adventure

Granny’s not lookin’! Good.” Five-year-old legs and feet flew across the yard to the picket fence. Nomie pulled up on the bottom rail then looked over her shoulder at the house. “Granny’s still not looking.” Nomie pulled herself from the bottom rail to the top of the fence post. She didn’t remember the ground being so far away. She closed her eyes and jumped from the top of the post to the ground three feet below. Tumbling to her knees on the gravelly path, Nomie wanted to cry from the scrapes but if she cried, Granny would hear her…. And then she would be in trouble. “I’m not gonna’ cry. Only babies cry and I’m no baby.” She picked herself up and started across the alfalfa field. Ole Jim, Uncle Tom’s black collie, limped after her on his three good legs. She spotted a four leaf clover and stopped to investigate. A bumblebee buzzed nearby. Nomie did not like bumblebees.

She looked up the hill at her Daddy’s house. Daddy of course was not home. He was at work driving his big yellow Kentucky Power Company truck. Nomie knew that if Daddy didn’t work, lots of people would have no ‘lectricity and they would be calling 117 and asking for Harry. She didn’t like it when Daddy had to go back out to work at night just ‘cause people didn’t have ‘lectricity. Up ahead here was a nice place to sit under the walnut tree and if she sat there, Granny couldn’t see her and make her come back to the house. Nomie didn’t want to have to come back to the house…not yet. Ole Jim laid down in the alfalfa next to her and she put her chubby arms around his neck and hugged him. “Good Jim…you’re my favoritest playmate…. except for Nancy and Sue…and Paul…but I can’t go to Daughtry Hollow by myself. Anyway…I’m scared to walk by the graveyard…even with you. Some ghost might jump out the grave and get me!”

Nomie wondered if her stepmother was home. Having a stepmother meant that Daddy had a new wife but she guessed that was okay…after all her momma was in heaven…had been gone to heaven a long time. Granny had explained all that and after all…Granny was her Momma’s momma. Still Nomie didn’t feel right about the stepmother. She didn’t know why…she just didn’t …but she didn’t have to worry…she had Granny and Uncle Tom, and Uncle Carter, and of course, Grampa.
Her eyes wandered to the field by the creek where the well house stood. Then she looked up the hill toward the Daddy house and saw the apple tree. Daddy had sawed a limb off the apple tree but he didn’t quite cut it all off. Sticking out was a piece of limb with a sharp point . It sure looked like a good limb to turn a flip-flop on. Could she do it? Maybe if she held on to the pointy limb and the one next to it…that would work? Nomie headed toward the tree. Ole Jim stayed where he was, his tongue sticking out as he panted for breath. He laid his head on his paws and continued to watch the little girl.

Nomie looked up at the tree. It wasn’t very high so she started to climb up so she could reach the pointy limb. Now how could she turn this flip-flop? She turned around facing the tree trunk and thought of a way she could try. As her body turned, the sharp point of the limb caught the waistband of her shorts and tore a hole in the seat! There Nomie swung …stuck on an apple limb …bobbing from her shorts. She yelled for help. There was no answer. Finally her stepmother came out of the basement door with a dishpan full of water that she threw in the garden. Her father’s new wife did not look Nomie’s way and then she turned and went back in the house. What could Nomie do now? She yelled for help again and again and nobody came. The bees kept buzzing from blossom to blossom in the tree and….still, nobody came. Nomie waited. . Granny couldn’t see the back of Daddy’s house…. and besides, Granny didn’t know where she was. Nomie hung in the tree bobbing like a big apple. She didn’t like this…. Not a bit.

What could she do? Nomie reached out and grabbed the trunk of the tree and pulled herself closer. She heard the rip in her shorts. Granny was going to be mad…real mad. Nomie wiggled and her shorts ripped further She kept on wiggling and finally fell half way to the ground. How could she get out? Maybe…..if she pushed backwards? Nomie pushed away from the tree and fell backwards toward the ground….her feet caught in what was left of her shorts legs! She kicked harder and …one foot came out….she kicked again and….at last…she was free!

Her legs hurt…..Granny would be mad…..Maybe she ought to get her torn shorts from the tree…Nomie wanted Granny. She grabbed the torn shorts and ran through the alfalfa field toward the fence gate and her Granny. Nearly there…she started crying and screaming at the top of her lungs ”Gran…nee……..Gra…nee…Gra..neeeee!” Tears rolled from her eyes as she screamed and ran across the field…through the hay grass…toward the house…toward her Momma’s Momma screamin’ and …cryin’. Ole Jim limped along behind her his lame hind leg tucked up.Climbed down the wet creek bank, slid under the woven wire fence at the back of the garden, ran through the peanut patch all the way to the back door, Nomie screamed every step of the way. Gran…….nee, Gran….eee, GRANNEE!

Turkey Calling

You jive-time turkey. Why are you knocking on my door? I could care less if you are a Republicrat or a Demican…neither party means much to me. Beneath the skin you are all the same..standing on my doorstep in my neighborhood in which you do not live and which you would not enter after dark or in three out of four years…yet you cram my mailbox with all this unsolicited propaganda trying to twist my thoughts to your biased, narrow view of the world…and now you ring my doorbell with that fake two-faced smile pasted on your face…who do you think buys your line of rhetoric anyway…involuntary lobotomies went out of style with the civil rights era….you know during the Sixties…when your predecessors passed all those treating your neighbor fair laws which you say discriminate against you…yes, I guess those laws did discriminate against you because you were definitely unborn at that time and let us face this fact.. since the unborn can not talk…they have no voice.

Ah….you say you’re born now…and you want to help me? I guess you do want to help me…probably into the poor house which you closed last year because after all government would be better served fighting a war and killing off the young people..who bought your plan to force a lifestyle down the throats of a different culture, a different religion because after all GOD spoke to you personally last night or night before and told you that the only people who would be permitted through the Pearly Gates were clones of you and yours…….who spoke the same language in the same way with the same flat intonation at the same minute in the infinite universe…oh I forgot…there is no universe…the stars are only painted lights on the ceiling of that dark room you call a mind….where logical thought and compassion are criminals to be arrested as threats to your home….land ……security.

T-I-O-N

Somewhere. way back when in the beginning of our NATION
We forgot the logic of the original EXPLANATION.
Forgot when the ancestral elders left on their EXPLORATION
Across the sea, long and lonely far from the REVOCATION
Of their right to freely kneel and practice the ADORATION.

Today, distantly removed stands the new GENERATION
Of politically correct refugees from ultimate SALVATION
Isolated, angry and devoid of desire to begin RENOVATION
Of a cultural, spiritually, morally bankrupt CIVILIZATION
Locked in an unheard, unheeded, unnoted VOCALIZATION.

Out of the mouths of concerned babes comes this ORATION
Demanding, requiring, desperately needing a new DEDICATION
A new definition, a new focus of prayerful CONSIDERATION
Toward reclaiming the original GOD-centered INSPIRATION
Of the essential founding truths of our elders’ EXPECTATION.

In the names of Father, Son, and Spirit we pour the LIBATION
To insure for eternity the healing, nurturing CONSECRATION
Of the sanctity stated hallowed liberty driven DECLARATION
That we as a people stand before the world’s OBSERVATION
Under God, under liberty, without any further JUSTIFICATION!

Sunday, Someday Remembered by an Absent-minded Penitent

Bright Sunday morning sunshine pouring through the stained class windows of our church. The image of the Christ is backlit in all its glory…HE with HIS hands extended to one and all who come through the door and down the center aisle to pause and kneel before the altar. They are the faithful who come each Sunday, each holy day and some other days besides ..to salute the altar and then to sit in meditation on the meaning of FAITH, to communicate with our GOD on the meaning and responsibilities of life…to beg forgiveness for transgressions from the straight and narrow….to achieve a semblance of peace within each individual soul….

Sunday morning , the most divided day in all our world because each of us seems to believe that his or her house of worship is the only viable entrance to the Afterlife. I personally do not believe that there is a specifically allocated section of the afterlife sat apart for each denomination but I would also admit that I am probably in the minority because of the innate wish of many people to play a childhood game of “one up.” This is the game that leads one person to think that he is “better” than other people. As a child growing up in a tiny mountain community, I would listen on Sunday morning for the bell pealing from either the Methodist church or the Baptist church as the bells called their individual members to service. I have attended services in both churches. Then some new people moved in and built a Holiness church and I have attended services in that church also. As a matter of fact, my aunt, Sister Belle, preached in that same church one week.

My father didn’t go to that particular service because as he would say, “I’m of a different persuasion.” I never did know exactly what “persuasion” that was but attending the service didn‘t matter because the Holiness church had a loudspeaker and the whole hollow had no choice but to hear the service in its entirety unless someone got in a vehicle and went across the river to Vinsontown. My stepmother, who was a Baptist, would rather sneak a drink than go to either one of the churches in our town. Her excuse was that she was a member of the church in Rivertown some 40 miles away by the highway, Matter of act my brother had her buried from that church . I was caught in an icestorm and even though I was on the way didn’t get there until after she was buried but I heard from another source that nobody came to the funeral because none of the members of that Rivertown church remembered her at all – not so surprising since she had moved from Rivertown some thirty years before Daddy’s service, on the other hand, had been quite different. An 84-year-old retired Free Will Baptist preacher from Vinsontown who had fought in the Big War with Daddy spoke over him and most residents of Yatestown, our town, and Vinsontown came.

Mountain people never seemed to much care what church a person went to. If there was a church in town and you felt like going..then you went and that was that. Sometimes people would fall out with either the preacher or somebody else in the church and change churches . Maybe other folks knew why the change took place and maybe they didn’t…neither the change nor the reason was earth shattering and life moved on. Life in those days was so much simpler than it is now. People had an innocence then that cable television and mass media have since damaged. Only occasionally do I hear a person speak with that distinctive manner of speech and the distinct choice of words that identifies them to another hill born person. Speech patterns may have changed but values and social actions are too inherent in our Appalachian culture. My adult children show their mountain heritage in the way they act, in how they choose their friends and in their personal values.

And on Sunday morning, on Holy Day morning, they scatter to whichever church draws their interest. My gospel music playing offspring will happily travel to whichever church calls him and his group to come and play. The group will join hands, Brother Rod will pray for Divine approval of their efforts and a joyful noise will be raised to the heavens. Sister Belle (my aunt) used a loudspeaker to spread the word but in these modern times the brothers of music have replaced the loudspeaker with an amplifier connected to both the electric guitar and the electric piano to make sure all the audience hears. The years have passed and methods have changed but the purpose is still the same. By sunlight, moonlight or starlight. touch the faith, let it shine through, let it be heard from the mountains to the hollows and beyond. Remind all of us of the values taught in our childhood and help us keep to the pathways that bring us into whatever building is dedicated for the personal communication with God that develops and strengthens our Faith, our so that within each soul we find peace and love for all His creatures.

The bells are tolling and we are being called to show our own belief in the right pathway to the whereafter. Please don’t ask me for specific directions because I can not give you a definitive answer. After all, I am the person who stood up and walked out the door of the church where a minister preached that everyone who went to another church across town was going to Hell because they did not come to his church. That particular preacher has slid on into the afterlife but I have not set foot in a building of his particular denomination in nearly forty years and I don’t think I am going back. The memory is a bit too prejudicial to me. In my current home town, I walked out of the church (which I claim) because I got really tired of folk looking at my black skin like I had leprosy or AIDS or some such incurable disease. Nor am I going to drive nearly twenty miles to the black church of the same denomination…where my children used to go to school. In that church I was sniped at and made fun of because of my Appalachian ways. No one there communicated with me until they wanted $5000 to build the new church…then they found my phone number. I , on the other hand, had lost my checkbook that day and couldn’t remember the way to the bank.

What I do find myself remembering is the Irish Catholic priest who came flying down a curvy twisty mountain road seemingly on two wheels of his raggedy station wagon because our house had burned and my oldest son had died…remembering the parish that reached out and took in a relatively new family in the community. That same priest who stopped in mid homily because I was carrying my baby son out of the sanctuary because he was screaming at the top of his lungs Father Rooney said quite forcefully, “Don’t you dare carry that boy out of this church..no matter how loud he gets…. He can cry here anytime he wants…” and Father waited until I sat down again before he continued . and continue he did …with HIS sermon!

The Unanswerable Question

This is a message I really can’t ever deliver. It is very personal.
Yes, you over there in your lonely suburban house.
Saw your grandson yesterday, the one you don’t know.
Nice kid –somehow he knows I’m related – same birthmark.
He keeps trying to figure it out – so he comes by my classroom.
Looks in – wondering – looks at me with questions in his eyes.
I’ve got no answers – just more questions, simple questions,
His name, his birthday, his daddy’s name, where he lives.
Questions I can’t ask.


Years ago I saw his daddy and I…..almost passed out.
Same height, same hair, same face just like his dead brother.
I sat there stunned and watched him move – a living ghost.
Hush! I told my child, close your mouth and shut up!
Went home, demanded answers from our aunt – who knew.
Got only a question in response – where’d you see him?
Then she said, “His momma wants nothing to do with us!”
Who’s he look like, how’d you know he was ours?



I still don’t know his name, our aunt wouldn’t talk
Any more on that subject, though she talked on many more.
Now, I understand why she wouldn’t speak and séances do no good.
My classroom is empty now, I don’t teach there anymore.
Your grandson will stop, look in, and find no answers,