When he leaves, I put away the laundry, carefully stacking the clothes and diapers on our new wooden shelves. Then I stroll around the kids’ room picking up toys. I stop when I notice my green journal and pull out an envelope. I’m surprised that Tom and I are thinking along the same lines. Actually I’m dreaming a few steps ahead.
Since meeting Etta Utt and the other mothers on my rounds for Community Action, I’ve begun to feel strongly that I want to take care of a wider variety of women, not just the healthy, low-risk, homesteading hippie women I’ve been privileged to serve. There are so many others that deserve tender, respectful care. I’ve already sent for, and received back in the mail, a pamphlet on how to become a certified nurse-midwife.
Sue Ellen’s breech delivery, the Blundell birth with meconium, and the death of the baby at the homebirth in Harper County have also affected me. I need more training. I sit on the edge of the bed and read through the flyer again.
To be a nurse-midwife, I’d need to go back to school, become an RN, and then most likely get my master’s degree. The program would take three or four years and we would have to leave the farm and West Virginia . . . I have two kids and no money . . . It doesn’t seem likely.
From a distance I hear a siren and picture Tom behind the wheel of the Roane County ambulance. He flicks on the flashing light and speeds out Route 33. The siren gets closer, then fades away.
Beelzebub
Winter is coming and Tom and Mica are working down in the woods, cutting dead pine for firewood. “Timber!” yells Tom. “Timmberrrrr!” echoes Mica, dragging it out like a lumberjack.
Not wanting to go out in the cold to the privy, I squat over the white porcelain potty in our new bathroom. If I’d used the outhouse, I might not have seen the six-inch-long parasite that emerged from my body. It lays on top of my stool.
“Tom!” I scream, peeking though my fingers.
There are moments in your life when, like a movie, things go into slow motion. The worm wiggles sensually . . . I’m a straight-A honor student who went to Girls State for God’s sake! I’m a midwife who eats all organic food. This can’t be happening!
“Tom!!” I scream louder and look through my fingers. It’s still there.
Over the years on the commune, we’ve experienced such third world afflictions as pinworms, impetigo, chiggers, head lice, and scabies; but a large roundworm is the last straw. Hearing my calls, Tom and Mica run in and stare down. Mica covers a little grin but my husband knows better than to laugh at me. I’m bawling my head off. “This is it!” I yell and pull up my jeans. “I can’t take it anymore. I can’t do this.”
“Settle down, Pats.” Tom lays his hand on me. “We’ll get medicine in town.”
“Call now,” I demand. “We want the strongest prescription.”
“I’ll phone Dr. Dan in the morning. His office is already closed. I’m gonna make dinner now.” Mica’s still patting my arm, and Orion, hearing his mother scream, has big eyes.
“Don’t make any food for me. I’d just be feeding the worms!”
I collapse on the window seat in the main room and put the baby to breast, more for my comfort than his, then pull Mica down beside me. “This is miserable, bud.”
“I know a song!” Mica’s blue eyes light up as he tries to cheer me. “I learned it from kids at the co-op.”
“Mmmm.” I’m too busy feeling sorry for myself to be interested.
Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, Mica chants in a singsong voice. I remember that song. I sang it when I was a kid, too. I think I’ll go eat worms.
“Nooooo!” I roll over and tickle Mica to get him to stop. Sometimes you have to laugh or you’ll cry. I’m laughing and crying. Orion smiles and drools milk, sensing a joke.
Big ones, little ones, Mica goes on. Fat ones, skinny ones . . .
Cleansed
For a week I can’t eat. We buy enough Mebendazole for everyone in the commune, just in case I’m not the only one riddled with parasites. Ronna, another of Colin’s friends from Chicago, who showed up three days ago to check out the commune, gets a pass on the meds. The thin forty-year-old, a former literature professor looking for a new life, hasn’t been here long enough to be considered potentially wormy. Rachel has generously offered the woman a place in her loft.
I take an extra dose of the Mebendazole, sixteen tablets in all. Tom reads from our worn copy of Where There Is No Doctor that 25 percent of the world population is infected with roundworms, but it doesn’t make me feel better. Some might say my response to the organism is exaggerated, that it’s no big deal. That’s because they’ve never seen a six-inch . . . live . . . wriggling . . . roundworm come out of their body.
After each trip to the outhouse, I check to see if another parasite emerges, but I never find one and neither does anyone else. The dreadfulness fades, but not much.
Then rains come. With Mara’s birth and the worm crisis, I hadn’t even noticed the change in the season. Oddly, I now feel spiritually cleansed, as if I’ve hit bottom. I’ve forgotten my dream of going to nurse-midwifery school. There are no homebirths coming up for at least two months. We’re just living each day and then going to bed.
CHAPTER 15
Flying
With care, I fold our best clothes and stuff them into a knapsack. I’m packing for a four-day excursion, a mini-vacation in Athens, Ohio, that Tom arranged, because he knows how low I’ve been since Mara left and the parasite made its appearance.
The plan seems to be having the desired effect. Some glad day when this life is over, I’ll fly away, I sing as I pack.
We haven’t been on a trip like this since our honeymoon, when we hitchhiked to Williamsburg, snuck into the grounds of Colonial National Historical Park, and slept illegally in a tent under a bridge. Mara and Ben have offered to take the boys, as a gift for my delivering Dylan.
Tom comes up behind me and tosses me on the bed. “Hey, cut it out!” We’re both feeling giddy, rolling around, messing up the quilt. “I can take you easy, buster.” I’m sitting on his stomach, pretending I’ve pinned him.
“You’re all mouth and no action.” Tom rolls me off with ease, holds me down, and gives me a long kiss. “Come on, you’ve packed enough. Let’s hit the road. The Knotts will be gone for a week and they have a washer and dryer.” The Knotts are the Quaker family he stayed with when he used to fix instruments in Athens at the music store.
“Good morning, flying squirrel,” I call out as a small soaring rodent sails across our path and lands spread out on the trunk of a maple before us. It’s a chilly day with a clear sky, no leaves on the trees, but the grass on the ridge is green from the rains. A few goldenrods still droop on their stems. My good mood bubbles over.
Some glad morning when this life is over, I’ll fly away, I sing at top volume, as we tromp across the ridge and then along the partially finished road along Anne Margaret’s fence line. An echo comes up from the hollow. I’ll fly away.
“No smoke from the chimney,” Tom observes, indicating her small cottage on the side of the hill. “Stacy told me Anne Margaret and Joshua went back to Chicago to see her parents and might stay awhile.”
Two more people gone, I think. Ordinarily this would spin me into depression, but today I’m detached. Just a few more weary days and then, I’ll fly away . . . The tune won’t leave my head. As we reach our new old 1965 red Volvo that Tom bought for $300 with his EMT money, my lover joins the chorus and I do a little jig before I get in.
Crossing Noble’s Ridge, on Route 33, I study the Arch Moore Vocational Center, with its long, low brick buildings, the place where Tom suggested I attend the LPN course and get paid to go to school by the federal CETA program.
At first I resisted, unable to picture myself as a nurse, carrying a doctor’s charts around, giving shots, and fluffing pillows, but two women friends fro
m the food co-op have already signed up, and I finally sent for the application. It may be a path toward becoming a certified nurse-midwife. Not only that: we could sure use the money.
Two hours later, as we cross the metal bridge over the Ohio River in Parkersburg, Tom breaks the quiet. “What do you want to do in Athens tonight?” I blink myself awake and squint at the traffic lights.
“Everything! Let’s get dinner and then go to a movie. It must be five years since we’ve been to a flick.”
“We took Mica to Star Wars in Spencer a year ago, remember?”
“Well, it was five years before that, then. And tomorrow you can take me to the music store where you used to work and I’ll get some new guitar strings. Sunday I want to go to Quaker meeting.”
In Athens, we do all the things I hoped for, and more: shop for kids’ clothes at the Salvation Army, trash-pick an old maple table we find on the sidewalk, watch mallards land in the blue-green water of Dow Lake. On Sunday, our last day in civilization, we wander over to the Ohio University library.
In a private glassed-in reading room, I rest my elbows on the scarred oak table. “So, what does Thomas Harman want to do with the rest of his life?” I tease, as if I’m a host on National Public Radio. I’m surprised when my husband answers seriously.
“I’ve been thinking . . . Remember when we were at the food co-op the other day, that couple from New York City that was talking about their ten-year plan? Nothing like that ever entered my mind. We’ve been so focused on being here now, but I like the idea. I’ve been asking myself, what would I like to do in the next ten years? I thought maybe I’d start by getting certified as a paramedic and eventually go to school to become a physician’s assistant.”
I’m taken aback by this revelation and a little pissed. “How come you didn’t say anything?” Like he’s had a big discussion with himself and I’ve been left out . . .
“I didn’t want to get in a fight. I know how important the commune is to you.”
“Since Laurel left for the dance troupe in Philadelphia there’s not much commune left, just Rachel and Stacy and the kids, you and I and that new friend of Colin’s, Ronna . . . if she decides to stay.” I rest my chin on my hand. “Where would you go to school, anyway? Is there a program near Spencer?”
“Nah, that’s the problem. Vogler says the closest paramedic classes are in Charleston or at Hocking College, a few miles north of Athens. This is just something I’ve been thinking about . . . I need employment we can count on. Carpentry isn’t reliable and an EMT position is minimum wage.”
I study my husband, seeing him in a new way, a man taking charge of his future. “Aren’t you afraid of being co-opted by the system? Losing your ideals?”
He laughs through his nose. “No.”
Above us, dust motes dance in the light through the tall, many-paned windows. I hadn’t wanted to talk about my fantasy of becoming a nurse-midwife. It makes me feel disloyal to what’s left of the community, as if we’re plotting a getaway . . . but since he shared his dream . . .
“Well, I looked into the LPN program.”
Tom tilts back in his chair and waits.
“If you get your LPN license at Arch Moore, you can get your RN in one more year at Parkersburg Community College.” Now that I’ve started, my fantasies flow like water from a spring in the hillside.
“You need to be a registered nurse to become a certified nurse midwife. We could do it, the two of us. I could open a birthing center. You could become a physician’s assistant. We could start a free clinic.”
Once I begin, I dream big, and Tom sits straight up in his chair. I almost skip to the reference desk, borrow a pencil and paper, and begin to sketch a collective future that we’d never imagined. Can I really give myself permission after fifteen years of living in the most spartan manner, at Tolstoy Farm, CNVA, Chester Creek House, the Homestead in Minnesota, and on the ridge at No Name Farm, to make such a radical change? Is it possible?
“We could move into Spencer this winter and rent a little house. I could apply to the LPN program and, if I get in, be paid by CETA. You could take care of the kids during the day while I go to school.”
Tom breaks in, scratching the cleft in his chin. “In the spring we can move back to the farm, work the gardens and live in the Long House. I could continue as an EMT, a few nights a week, and when you’re a nurse, you could support us while I go to school.”
There are moments in your life when time speeds up like a film on fast-forward. This is one. We excitedly draw timelines and maps with circles of the distance we’ll have to move from Roane County, the center of our world, if I’m to become a nurse-midwife and Tom’s to become a paramedic or physician’s assistant.
We have no idea how we’ll pay for our education or how we’ll take care of our children, but we are euphoric; we’ve done difficult things before. What’s this compared to building log houses, cultivating fields with only hoes and spades, hauling water for a quarter of a mile, walking through blizzards? Nothing seems impossible.
Back on State Street, an outline of our ten-year plan folded in quarters and tucked in Tom’s jeans, we sit on the edge of the fountain at the archway to the Ohio University campus. The smell of lamb and vegetables from the falafel cart on the corner reaches across the lawn. It’s a warm night for November.
“If you didn’t know us,” I whisper to Tom, “you might think we were just hip university students, just playing flower children. You couldn’t tell, by looking, what we’ve been through, the joy and the hardships.”
This notion pleases me. “No one would know that just a few days ago, we were living like Guatemalan peasants or that a few weeks ago I expelled a foot-long roundworm.” I’m exaggerating for effect and Tom smiles. It’s the first time I’ve been able to make a joke about the parasite.
The streetlamps come on and shine down on the undergrads crossing the intersection near the student bookstore. “Come over here,” I whisper, and lead Tom around the backside of the fountain. On a pile of leaves, we lie down in the shadows under a bare maple and look up at the sky. There’s no sound but the cascading water, the cars moving down State Street, and a girl’s distant laugh.
On our backs, we gaze up at the almost full moon. High overhead, there’s the high-pitched barking of late geese heading south. I strain to see them, peering through a web of branches, and am suddenly falling into the sky, then sailing high across the green campus and over the silver river below. Like the flying squirrel, I soar, wheel across the rolling hills of southern Ohio, then over the steeper hills of West Virginia.
I see headlights below of semitrucks on the four-lane, then smaller lights of pickups on Route 33. Below, in Spencer, on the state hospital grounds, Mara and Benny are putting Mica and Orion and Dylan to bed in their two-story cottage.
I follow Steele Hollow Road up the ridge, my arms like wings, and circle low over the farm. Only one kerosene light shines golden out the window of the Little House, a tiny beacon of hope, where Stacy sits cross-legged on the floor playing the Autoharp for Rachel and the new woman, Ronna. For the beauty of the earth . . . they sing the old hymn. For the glory of the skies. For the love which from our birth over and around us lies . . .
The bells in the tower of the Presbyterian church on Court Street are ringing the same song this evening. Tom and I know the words and sing the hymn together. For the beauty of each hour, of the day and of the night. He reaches for my hand and our palms fit together. Spirit of all to thee we raise, this our song of grateful praise . . .
FROM THE SILVER JOURNAL
CEDAR HOUSE ON HOPE LAKE
2008–2009
Spring
CHAPTER 1
Night Call
“How bad?” Tom asks, rubbing his fingers through his short silver buzz.
Not a good first line, and I shut my eyes ti
ght. I wasn’t always this way, afraid of night phone calls. It was the years of teenage rebellion that did it. There were calls from the cops, calls from other parents, calls from the ER. If my boys didn’t end up in prison they would end up dead, that’s what I feared . . .
I sit straight up in our king-sized pillow-topped bed and turn on the light.
“Is there much blood?” Definitely not a good second line. “OK, admit her short stay. I’ll see her in the morning. But don’t give her any more narcotics. Her surgery was over three weeks ago.” He hands the phone back and I place it into the charger.
“What?”
“It’s a chronic-pelvic-pain patient that I did a laparoscopy on almost a month ago. She’s having vaginal bleeding. Probably just a period, but she’s carrying on so much, the ER doc doesn’t want to send her home.” Tom turns off the light and adjusts his pillow. Already his breathing slows, but I’m still wide awake, pulsing with adrenaline. It’s 2:45 a.m.
I stare around our bedroom, a space so large it could hold the whole Minnesota log cabin.
Outside, faint moonlight shines through the trees, pours into the room through the floor-to-ceiling windows, lays shadows across the floor. Pulling on my long white terry bathrobe, I pad across the carpet. A ghost woman nods from the reflection in the glass. In the likeness, you can’t see the gray streaks in my short, once chestnut, hair, or the faint worry lines over my nose. You can’t see my blue eyes, still round when I get excited, or the pink cheeks, but it’s still me, the girl with long braids.
As I pass our dresser, I feel for my prayer box, a small, round, red wooden container with stars and the moon on the lid. My three boys’ names are in there on tiny slips of paper and my brother, Darren’s, living in Arizona. There’s a prayer for Trish, our friend from the health center, whose daughter died of a drug overdose . . . and Nila, my patient who ran away from her husband. Next to it is the prayer candle I light every night. I stop for a moment with my hand on the box, then step out on the porch and smell the fresh-cut grass and something else familiar, wet dirt and growing things.
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