Back to church. I know as a Catholic I shouldn’t feel comfortable there, but I do. It’s my belief and Lew’s that GOD COMES WHEREVER LOVE IS.
Wednesday, March 11
10:10 A.M.
Melvin has a guitar, and he’s teaching me to play three songs. Church songs. They make me feel good. They are: “Where Love Is, There God Is Also” and “I Am a Child of God” and “Love at Home.” Maybe that’s not church—but if it isn’t, it should be. Melvin is going to teach me some country songs after I memorize the chords for these. That’s funny, because Aunt Thelma listens mostly to classical music. I myself sometimes take my Ghetto Blaster and go up above the falls and turn it on as loud as it will go and listen to kid music. Red Alert covers his ears and whines or slithers away, but he never goes far. Melvin threatened to make him into dog stew if he didn’t take good care of me and Cougar.
Cougar is the funniest cat I’ve ever seen. He follows me and Red Alert anywhere, even when we climb on the steep rocks by the little falls. Aunt Thelma says the stream only runs heavy enough for it to be a waterfall all year when they have a good snowpack up above. Thank goodness they did last winter, because it’s the most sacredly beautiful place in the world.
Another funny, nice thing about Aunt Thelma is she thanks God for everything under the sun all the time. I like that. It’s showing appreciation and caring. I’m trying hard to be more like that. Nearly every day she paints in her studio or out around the ranch; then twice a year she takes her works to art shows and sells them. It’s an ideal way to live, and she makes good money doing what she loves doing and would do for nothing if she had to. I hope I have a profession like that. I dream of being a pediatrician, so I guess that fits into the category. But…sometimes I forget about my future or my no-future…I pray somebody will soon find a cure. Oh, I really, truly, honestly do.
Thursday, March 12
5:10 A.M.
Aunt Thelma came in and woke me and Cougar up. She says she has a surprise for me…I wonder what it can be. Guess I better hurry and get dressed so I can find out…. See ya.
7:30 P.M.
When I got downstairs, Melvin had both Sonny and Cher saddled up with big fat backpacks on both of them. Thank goodness I was wearing my jeans, and more thank goodnesses that baggies are in.
Anyway, I climbed up on Cher a little timidly. I’d only been on two horses before in my life. Once at the pony ride when I was little and once up at El’s uncle’s cabin. Aunt Thelma jumped up on Sonny like a real cowboy, or “cowperson” or whatever, and we started up the trail with Red Alert following us. Oh yes, Melvin had strapped a basket in front of me on the saddle to put Cougar in. Cougar didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he just curled up and went back to sleep like it was nothing.
As we took off, Melvin hollered that Sonny started out leading and that after a while Cher would take over, but not to worry—she knew where she was going. If she didn’t, Aunt Thelma would giddy-up Sonny to lead.
It’s been a soft spring, dozens of shades of new green, a day always to remember. We crossed the stream with the horses kind of picking, slipping over the rocks. I was scared and reached over Cougar and held on to the saddle horn for dear life, but Cougar didn’t seem to mind it at all. In the middle of the water, Cher stopped to get a drink, and I thought I was going to slide down over her head, but the saddle stayed steady. On the other side, she stooped down to nibble at wild clover with little popping-out purple pompoms on top. Aunt Thelma told me to pull up her head and kick her in the flanks, but I didn’t dare. I didn’t want to take ANY chance of falling off and having to go to the hospital or something. Far away, in a place I’d never seen before, we stopped in a just-beginning-to-leaf, dense aspen grove. Before we got there a few wildflowers were so high, they brushed against the horses’ bellies, and fragrances you wouldn’t believe lightly spumed up around us, except when Sonny, in front of us, pooped or let gas, which was often!
When we stopped, Aunt Thelma brought out her paint stuff and a lunch box that would have served a tribe of Indians if they had swooped down on us from the rocks above.
Cougar was slinking around curiously, checking things out, and Red Alert was down the hill barking and chasing a rabbit or a squirrel or something. Aunt Thelma said she hoped it wasn’t a skunk, that he’d done that a couple of times and gotten sprayed.
Aunt Thelma set up two collapsible willow easels that Melvin had made for her, and she asked me to look on her right and tell her what I saw. I just saw some chunks of reddish rough rocks that looked like they’d rolled down the mountain when the Earth was created.
Aunt Thelma laughed and told me that was an interesting observation, but that I hadn’t REALLY looked for the things that only the eye of appreciation could see.
I walked closer. It was still a pile of rocks.
“Look closer,” she whispered.
I did, and snuggled down in between the big rocks was a miniature garden with teensy, teensy flowers smaller and more fragile-looking than any I had ever seen. She brought out a magnifying glass, and we examined each leaf pattern and stem and petal as well as their dimensional relationship to the rest of the flower. The flowers were like…well…I felt like I did the last time I was here. That I was Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels. It was the neatest experience. Us giants and them normal.
After a bit, Aunt Thelma had me close my eyes and describe the picture of the tiny garden in the minutest detail. I remembered she’d done that before when I had been here. This time she had me study the little, lovely garden three times, then verbally paint a picture of it for her as though she were blind. I really wanted to do a good job and tried very hard, finding it challenging but fascinating too.
Aunt Thelma and I then started mixing paints, first white, then a little red, then a bare touch of blue and a speck of yellow. Finally she had almost the exact color of the blossoms. She easily mixed colors for the stem and leaves and rocks, and we began painting. Cougar curled up in his basket by my feet and in the distance the horses whinnied, and the bees buzzed and the butterflies floated, and life was perfect, absolutely perfect! Who needed a radio? The music of nature was enough.
Occasionally Aunt Thelma would reach over and put a little dab here or there on my painting, or tell me I was using too much paint or too little or had a wrong brush stroke or something. She was doing a big canvas, and I was doing a small one that would practically have the flowers at their real size.
We’d stop occasionally and go for a little walk or lie down and just listen and love and be a part of life, plus every little while Aunt Thelma and I and Cougar and Red Alert would have a little snack. Once Red Alert ran away. I could hear him far, far away in the distance. I got concerned, but Aunt Thelma said, “He’s probably gone back to the stream for a drink.” She didn’t suspect he liked lemonade.
The day passed much too quickly, and I didn’t think about…you know…even once.
When I’d finished my picture, Aunt Thelma pulled out the picture I’d painted the first time I was here. This one was a million times better than that one, but Aunt Thelma’s was a million, million times better than mine.
Melvin had made special frames for the paintings so the paint wouldn’t smear, and obviously Sonny was used to carrying the big floppy canvases, one on each flank.
I wish every day for the rest of my life could be so…so…there are not positive enough words to describe it, except…maybe sacred?
11:20 P.M.
I try to stay so busy that I can’t think, but I don’t know how I can stay so busy that I forget to talk to you, dear Self, but I really do. Melvin’s teaching me to play the guitar, and we’re going to get a guitar book when we go to town, and then he’s going to teach me to read music and to write my own songs. I want to write one about the ranch and everything around it. I wonder if any words or music could ever express the beauty that is here. Aunt Thelma is teaching me to paint, as you know, and with me helping Melvin with the chickens and the cows and the horses and Ba
llard, the crippled mallard duck that lives with the chickens (he thinks he’s one of them), and canning and drying and weeding (I don’t do much of that—it’s too hard). Anyway, I’m positively, always positively pooped.
Sunday, March 15
Mom and Dad came up for the weekend. I almost wish they hadn’t. IT H-U-R-T-S sooooooooooo much when they leave! I’ve a bushel of letters from the gaggle and Adam. I can’t read them, and I wish they wouldn’t phone and phone and phone! It makes life too real! It’s not! I’m not! Sometimes I wish they’d all just leave me alone…BUT I’M GLAD THEY DON’T TOO! I don’t know what I wish. I wish I did.
Monday, March 16
4:30 A.M.
Last night a bronchial problem flared up. I really got concerned…actually, I got scared spitless…then a strange thing happened. Cougar, who had been sleeping at the foot of the bed like he does usually, came up beside me and started purring and licking my cheek. It helped me calm down and almost go back to sleep. Then it happened again, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. For a second I thought that would be a good way to go and I tried to relax, but I couldn’t. It hurt too much and felt too evil. I started whimpering softly, not wanting to wake Aunt Thelma, but not being able to control the sounds either.
After a second or two, I heard Red Alert softly scratching on the front door. He’s allowed to come into the house anytime he wants, but he doesn’t seem to want to very often. I let him in, and he followed me right up to my bed and popped in on the side opposite Cougar. His big, hairy, part-wolf, part-German-shepherd body took up most of the room in my single bed, but I felt good and cuddled and safe in there. For a moment I wasn’t sure that Aunt Thelma would like his outside body on her inside homemade quilt comforter, but that wasn’t the most important thing in my life at that moment.
Red Alert made a soft little deep, growling sound like, “Now I’m here to take care of you, go back to sleep and don’t bug me.” He yawned, and his monstrous teeth and his huge big mouth in his huge head made me mind him.
Wednesday, March 18
8:27 P.M.
I’ve felt miserable the last couple of days. Like I’ve got a terrible case of the flu, but I can’t let Aunt Thelma see it! I try to do everything I usually do and appear upbeat and perky, but inside I’m ANYTHING BUT THAT…OH, it is sooooo bad. Red Alert has been sleeping on my bed every night. I put a sheet over the comforter so Aunt Thelma won’t know, but I feel guilty about that too. Red Alert isn’t out where he can protect everything else, and I’d feel awful if a weasel or a skunk or something got in and killed Ballard or any of the others.
Red Alert takes up so much room that sometimes I can hardly turn over, or when I do I find my head in his hair or his face. And much as I love him, he does have DOG BREATH. IN FACT, I’ve seen him eat doo-doo, and if he’s in the house he drinks out of the toilet. Who wants a friend who does that? I do!
Thursday, March 19
9:21 A.M.
Aunt Thelma and Melvin are worried about me. They think I’m depressed, but I’m not! I’m as filled with bubbly sunshine as I was when I first got here. It’s just that I have no energy, none at all! It makes me tired to eat; and I have to eat so I won’t hurt Aunt Thelma’s feelings as well as to keep up what little strength I have.
Aunt Thelma finally asked me what I thought we should do. The only thing I could think of was to call Dr. Sheranian in South Carolina. He probably knows as much as anyone about AIDS. At least he’s supposed to, and I trust him. I hope he tells me it will go away or that I can take some medicine or something.
10:01 A.M.
We’ve got a call in for Dr. S. now. The nurse said he’d probably call during his lunch break if he didn’t have an emergency. Let’s see, one hour and 59 minutes. I guess I can wait that long.
I don’t feel like it, but I’m going out to the clover patch and try to find a lucky four-leaf clover.
Oh, before I go, let me tell you about cagey Red Alert. Every morning early, he whines softly or breathes in my face till his breath wakes me up; then I let him out before Aunt Thelma wakes up. Before I get back in bed, I fold up the sheet and tuck it under the mattress. It’s great now, but I wonder what’s going to happen when it rains, or during the winter when he’s covered with slush snow. Oh well, we’ll face that battlefield when we come to it.
1:40 P.M.
Dr. Sheranian called back at 12:33. Melvin was on the porch working, and Aunt Thelma was sitting at the kitchen table so at least she would hear my side of the conversation. Red Alert was sitting at her feet, and Cougar was sitting at mine. First Dr. S. told me how much he loved me and missed me and how he wishes we could just be friends instead of doctor and patient; then he listened patiently to everything I had to say. I was embarrassed to talk about some of the stuff in front of Aunt Thelma, but I told him every detail anyway, about how the rectal ulcer flared up and went down and how I still sometimes wet the bed, although I tried to drink a lot in the morning and little in the afternoon and evening; and about my mouth and eyes and now my hurty chest and my lack of energy.
He asked me if my chest felt like it had when I’d had pneumonia, and I said no, it was just like all my insides were swelling and getting stuffed up. He waited for a minute, then reminded me that we had once talked about death. It had seemed ugly and cruel and mean then, but it didn’t seem so much that way now. After a while, he suggested I just slow down for a week or so and then call him back, sooner if anything big happened.
I FELT SOOOOOOOO RELIEVED. I’d thought maybe he’d suggest I go to some hospital somewhere…but he said no, to stay here. Isn’t that wonderful! Aren’t you happy out of your skin? Aunt Thelma and Melvin and I all danced around the room like three nutso school’s-out kids.
Friday, March 20
5:30 A.M.
First day of real spring! Maybe I’ll have a reawakening too! I hope! I was going to sleep in this morning, but Samuel the Lamanite stood on his wall and cock-a-doodle-dooed till he woke me up.
I appreciate so much that Aunt Thelma and Melvin don’t try to coddle or overprotect or baby me. They know I’m trying to listen to my body and stay cool. The only time they got uptight was when a big fat rattlesnake slithered out just in front of me when I was going to take my plastic bag of personal garbage to the trench where I put it in and then shovel a little dirt in on it so the flies and stuff wouldn’t come there. Old Red Alert was there and had that snake’s neck in his mouth before I let out my first scream. I was so afraid that he’d get bitten that I wanted to go in and help him, but I didn’t know what end of which one I should try to grab, or if I should run for the shovel.
By the time Aunt Thelma and Melvin got there, I was a wimpy, shaking pile of Jell-O. In fact, Melvin had to practically carry me into the house. He would have completely carried me if Aunt Thelma hadn’t given him a stern look. She wanted me to stay as independent as I could. Like she wouldn’t wash my bedding, nor would she let Melvin do it. I’m sure she would, though, if I really needed it. She even took the box of rubber gloves that I had put inside on my bedroom table out in the hall and put it in the linen closet.
Sunday, March 22
1:32 P.M.
I told Aunt Thelma that she and Melvin should go to church, that I’d be all right at the ranch with Red Alert to protect me, but she smiled and said they’d decided to have church at home. I didn’t know you could do that, except I remember Red’s uncle Bill had.
It was really special. Melvin said the opening prayer, and we all three sang my favorite songs with Aunt Thelma on the piano and me accompanying on the guitar and Melvin playing his mandolin. “Love at Home,” “Where Love Is, There God Is Also,” and “I Am a Child of God,” my very favorite favorites.
Aunt Thelma talked about LOVING GOD AND LOVING OUR NEIGHBOR AS OURSELVES, and then Melvin talked about DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU. He said that all major churches have that Golden Rule in common. That made me super happy.
It was a strange feeling, thoug
h, when Aunt Thelma asked me to say the closing prayer. I wanted not to…but I wanted to too, so I stumbled through all the thanksgivings I could think of, and there were plenty. In fact, I’d just gotten a good start when Aunt Thelma coughed politely, and I said, “Amen.” It felt good. It was the best church service we’ve ever been to. Didn’t you think so, Self?
2:10 P.M.
Dear Self:
This seems really crazy, crackers, nutso, bananas, but as I feel worse in the physical me, I seem to be feeling stronger and brighter and lighter in the spiritual me. Does that make sense? No, I didn’t think so…but it’s still the way I feel. And I don’t feel so all-the-time hollow-lonely anymore for everyone. THAT’S weird too, isn’t it?
9:30 P.M.
This afternoon, Aunt Thelma called a lady she thinks I would like to know. She’s going to fly up in a few days on our puddle jumper. Aunt Thelma won’t tell me who it is, but she says it’s going to be a VERY SPECIAL, WONDERFUL surprise! Who could it be? Hmmm—my mom, no. She would have told me. Dad…no, he’s not a woman…I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
Black Monday, March 23
Today the most tragic thing in my life happened. Red Alert didn’t come in for his breakfast, and it seemed especially quiet around the place. Melvin and Aunt Thelma and I all went looking for him. He’s always around for meals. After we’d looked every place we could think of, even on my bed, we looked in his dogaloo, which has a door on it that opens and closes when he gets close to it, like a garage door, except the electric thing is on his collar and works automatically.
Anyway, he was all curled up in there, and we thought he was asleep, but he was dead. Melvin said he’d died peacefully in his sleep. It really, honestly looked like that is what had happened, because he almost had a smile on his face.
At first I felt almost heartbroken; then Aunt Thelma explained to me about what a wonderful life he’d had here at the ranch and that he was lucky to go in such a kind way.
It Happened to Nancy Page 16