The great flag that flies by the river was limp in the windless sky as I walked. I stopped to watch as a slight breeze unfurled it in lazy morning slow motion. The sun was shining brightly through the stars and stripes and it made me proud. It seems appropriate this morning to share the unfurling.
America…land of the free and home of the brave.
Peace…
My maternal grandmother would be 114 today. Her birth name was Artiemisha Lucille Holt. I never heard Artiemisha, which must have been after her grandmother, Artimissa. I found that doing genealogy or I would have always thought her name was just Artie. She grew up on a farm in southern Oklahoma, near Durant, where she was one of a bunch of kids. I knew Nat and Clint and Lilly and the others, but there were more half brothers and sisters from her father’s first marriage. I don’t know much about her life before, but I think she was 18 when she married Benjamin Newton West, who was 21 years older than she. Before my mother died, she told me that my grandfather came to pick my grandmother up to get married in a cart with a brown horse and a brown blanket. Her parents handed her a bouquet and they left. My grandfather’s best friend was with him and asked, “Where did you find this pretty little thing?” I don’t know much about their marriage other than the precious story of my grandfather building a fire in the morning and then carrying my grandmother down to get warm. They had three children, two boys and a girl, and he worked for his father at the West Wagon Yard in Ardmore and then for the telephone company, stringing lines, I believe. I know my mother was born at her grandmother’s home in the country, so they must have lived there for awhile. When he was fifty-one, he died of Bright’s Disease, a kidney disease that could be easily cured today. My grandmother was 29 years old with three small children, widowed in the depression. My mother was five.
I guess my grandfather knew he was going to die because he left a small neighborhood grocery for my grandmother for income. She ran that for years, supporting the kids through times when their gas was turned off because they didn’t have a nickel for the bill. But my mother remembers they laughed a lot. My mother was a serious and proud child, who loved her mother dearly and always recognized the debt she owed her. My grandfather’s parents were among the founders of Ardmore, OK and had operated the West Wagon Yard. They owned property and my grandmother did own her home, which was the only reason they survived, according to my mother. By the time I was born, the grocery store was long gone and my grandmother’s income came from renting out rooms in her house and another property from my great-grandmother.
I was the oldest grandchild on that side of my family. I was born several months early and my mother didn’t know much about babies, so my grandmother came and got me when I was a few weeks old. I don’t think it warped my relationship with my mother, but I was always close to my grandmother. She was a prissy little girl, so her brothers called her Dude, as did most of her close friends and family. I called her Mommie Dude. She was such an innocent in so many ways and so wise in others. I don’t think she had more than a 9th grade education but she raised three very smart children, mostly on her own. She packed parachutes at the Ardmore Air Base during the war.
My visits with Mommie Dude were among the most precious memories of my childhood. I spent time at her house in Ardmore in the summers, swinging on the front porch swing for hours, picking pears off the trees in the back yard, rummaging through her drawer of photos or the garage full of stuff. I chased horny toads and lightning bugs and walked to the ice plant for chips of ice and downtown to the dime store and to visit my uncle at the bank. She finally got a car, but was never a good driver. There was once an article in the Daily Ardmoreite with the news that Artie West had her grandchildren at the ice cream place. I still have her cedar chest where she kept her fur coat and a hunk of her hair (don’t ask me why people kept their hair in those days). It was all mysterious. I played her records and she sang me old, old songs that I try to remember today. Those songs were old folk songs and I’ve tried to find the history of some. She made us “squares” when she knew we were coming. “Squares” were koolaid, frozen in ice trays. We would get a bowl of squares and eat it while swinging on the front porch. It made the hot summers without air conditioning more bearable and fun. There are so many other stories to write about my times with her…and I will.
Mommie Dude always wrote me and I have her letters somewhere in my garage, boxed with letters from my parents and grandparents. Often she would put in a dollar, telling me to go get a Pepsi. A dollar was a lot to her. I loved getting those in the mail, even through college. I have a photo of my grandmother with my three girls, holding 9 month old Kerry as they all stood on her porch in Ardmore. Shortly after that, she was crippled with arthritis, almost overnight, and had to move to a nursing home. My mother finally brought her to Tulsa, where she lived in pain until her death. I was at the nursing home the night she died and sat beside her, singing the old songs that I hold so dear. This sweet woman loved me so unconditionally all my life and taught me so many lessons without even knowing it. Today, I’m thinking of her with love in my heart and a smile on my face.
My mother used to always tell us the story of our birth on our birthdays. She would call or I would see her and she would start off with “Twenty-one years (or whatever our age was) ago today, I had a baby girl.” Then she would tell us the details of that day. And we laughed…but, we always waited for the story. I’ve done the same with my kids. It’s just a funny tribute to my mother and a sweet remembrance of those special days when I gave birth to my incredible children.
Thirty-seven years ago today, I had a beautiful baby boy. He was my fourth child, following three girls. He wasn’t planned, which turned out to be appropriate. Who could have planned for Clayton? That day, I felt like I was having labor pains, so I called the doctor and he had me go to the hospital. I had the girls very quickly and he knew that I didn’t need to wait around. The girls were all born early and this one was late by about a week. Of course, we didn’t know he was a boy. This had been an interesting pregnancy anyway. I didn’t know I was pregnant and they did some tests and decided it was an etopic pregnancy. I had surgery and they cut me open to find out that everything was ok. I must have had an MRI and they had just gotten the machine and nobody was very proficient in reading the tests. I remember the doctor opening me up and then cursing. He realized I was awake and apologized, but I understood that he was frustrated that he had just done surgery on someone who didn’t need it. From then on, the pregnancy was easy. I remember diving in the pool all summer, feeling great. I also remember being at the mall where there was a fountain. I was very pregnant with three little girls with me and one of them tried to climb in the fountain. The thought went through my mind that I must look like a mother duck waddling along with little ones trailing behind me. Another friend told me I just looked like a knocked-up 14 year old.
Anyway, on that day, I went to the hospital and waited. The doctor wouldn’t let me go home because of the other quick births. Finally, they sent me out to the fathers’ waiting room to sit with my husband. You can’t imagine how strange that was. Dads didn’t get to go in while you were in labor or giving birth back then…nobody did. The fathers’ waiting room was full of about to be Daddys who couldn’t figure out why I was there. I read magazines with them and read the comments book that the fathers wrote in while they waited. Alan was frustrated and nervous. This was too odd. When I went back into the labor rooms, they tried to check the baby’s heartbeat. The nurse said they were having a problem because the baby was dancing around in there…”doing the hustle.” Well, it was 1975…what an inkling of things to come. At some point during the evening, after we had been there all day, the doctor came in to tell me that the baby was stuck and they needed to do a c-section. I guess the head was pressing on my pelvic bone and couldn’t get over to the way out. He had a dent in his head for a long time that made me laugh. Tears rolled down my cheek, not from fear, but because I could just see another scar on my stomach next to the one from the earlier surgery that had stretched to about an inch or more wide as my abdomen expanded. It turned out that they took that one out & made another one.
When they wheeled me into the operating room, it was later that night. They painted my hugely expanded abdomen with iodine so it was oddly orange. They put a curtain across me so I wouldn’t be able to see the operation, but I turned my head and saw the reflection in the window just as they began to cut. I turned back and listened to the conversation. The anesthesiologist was holding my hand & sitting by my head…his name was Dr. Love. When they pulled out Clayton, Dr. McShane almost shouted “it’s a boy!” Dr. Love kissed me on the forehead. Dr. McShane couldn’t wait to get out of there and run to tell Alan. They all knew I had three girls by this point. I just laid there and smiled. Unbelievable!
We named him Clayton Alan Fraser. Clayton was for all the men in my family (my grandfather, father and brother) who were named James Clay. My grandfather went by Clayton. Alan was after my husband, Alan, and his father, who was Ralph Allan. We covered all the bases. Alan went immediately to buy him a pair of jeans and found a size one. They didn’t have baby jeans back then.
That is the story. Clay was unique in all good ways. He spent the next 35 years teaching me, teaching us all, to enjoy life. He was the cutest, sweetest, kindest little active boy who was determined to be different from his sisters. He didn’t need to try, but try he did to the point of trying us all. Keeping up with him as a job for everyone. He was always a character, always funny. From as early as possible, he and his father would sit and trade puns. He knew he was funny and it kept him out of the trouble he should have been in. He was smart enough to know that he would learn the way he was going to learn and the teachers had just better figure that out. He hated timed tests, preferring to work on his time. He wiggled and squirmed through classrooms all the way through college but probably remembered more than I did being the perfect student. He charmed his way past many a teacher. The typical summary of a kid like this is that his sisters and I were driving to Westminster College for his graduation and got a call from him saying that he was going to go through the ceremony but wouldn’t get the degree. I think he flunked bowling or something ridiculous. We watched him walk in his cap and gown, taking another Clayton moment in stride. He finally got that degree years later, taking two classes and getting As so that he could get into culinary school. He promptly handed me the diploma as it meant little to him. You have to shake your head and roll your eyes.
This is a long blog and my heart is full of memories today, so I’ll give the shortened version. Clay grieved when his father died of cancer. He went into a state of depression that we didn’t realize since he was away at college. He came home, fell in love and the wonderful girl was killed in a tragic fire. He picked himself up and went back to school, started a comedy improv group, and began living again. He then went through the graduation I mentioned before, came home and started teaching English as a second language and waiting tables with his friends at BBD. He complained of problems and pains in his jaw and nothing could be found. One day he announced to me that he wanted to have his tonsils out. I told him I didn’t know if you could just ask to do that, but he did. When the doctor came out after that simple surgery, he told me they had found cancer behind the tonsil. I had to wait the weekend to let the doctor explain it to Clay in his office. A horrible weekend that makes me cry to remember…watching him and knowing I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t know enough myself. When we left the office, a tear ran down his cheek. “Why do we always have to get the rare cancers?” Clay had Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma and his dad had died of cancer of the esophagus (rare at the time). A friend told me it was the scream he couldn’t get out. A doctor nodded when I told him that.
From the time he found out he had cancer, Clay was adamant with me that this was his cancer. He would be the one to fight it. We all know it takes everyone you have to fight cancer, but he was trying to make me not worry. I look at a statue he gave me one Mother’s Day. It’s of a buddha like figure, bent over with worry. He told me it was to keep me from worrying. That was even before the cancer. The treatment – neutron and electron radiation – that Clay received in Seattle was new in 2001. It gave him 10 more years and it killed him in the end. The cancer did come back, as it does in this kind, and he was able to beat it with natural means. His death was from the residual effects of the radiation. But those last ten years were incredible. As the radiation effects took hold, he lost his ability to talk and eat. But along that journey, he met and fell in love with Whitney, finished school, went to culinary school and became an incredible baker (it didn’t take much talking), and produced Eliza May Fraser. Many people don’t do all that with well bodies.
I look back on the 35 years we had with my incredible son and think of all that he gave us. He lived his life on his terms, he loved and was loved by so many people, he made us laugh and he taught us bravery. He lived with incredible pain and touched lives everywhere he went. He had a full life in 35 years and taught me that we never know how much time we have on this earth. This weekend, I was with his daughter Eliza, who is now 3. She knew we were getting together later to celebrate her daddy. We went to the park and she started calling out to him…”where are you, Daddy? Daddy, where are you?” She does this with a smile on her face as she seems to talk to him often. She wanted him to be at the party. It doesn’t make me sad because she seems to have a relationship with him that we all wish we were innocent enough to have. I told her he was there…he is all around us. She understands and that is the blessing.
I love you, Clayton Alan Fraser!
We have a drought going on in Oklahoma, which made it a question of whether we would have fall colors. Sometimes, in droughts, the leaves just dry up and fall off. Or we have wind that blows the leaves from the trees just as they have turned. This year, summer seemed to not want to leave. The temperatures were warm and the leaves stayed green. Then the calendar turned to November and the leaves had just had it. Overnight, the colors came out. When I went walking yesterday morning, the sun was shining through the leaves on a cloudless, still day and the colors were just incredible. Here are some phone shots I took. Look for the mistletoe in one of the trees. My husband used to shoot it down for me when he was out bird hunting and loved bringing it home from his treks in the fields on those crisp fall mornings.
Tulsa…Oklahoma…
Get out and enjoy it!
Once a month, I get together with a group of friends for breakfast. We meet at Caroline’s condo and take turns bringing the food. This is about more than breakfast, as most gatherings of friends are more about being together. We started this when my son died and they wanted to be there for me. We hadn’t been getting together on a regular basis and found we were missing each other, so we made it a regular event. This is our safe place where we can laugh and cry together. Sometimes we spend the whole morning on one person’s life crisis, another time we gossip the morning away. There is always too much to talk about and the rule is that this is a place where you can say anything and it won’t go anywhere else. We laugh until we cry, we cry and hug each other, we pray together, we say horrible things, we worry for each other, and we look forward to the next time.
And, the food is always delicious! We try recipes, we pamper ourselves with food we wouldn’t fix otherwise. Even the most routine breakfast is special…maybe because of the company.
I’ve known Caroline since kindergarten, when I was four and she was five. We were in school all the way through college together – my only friend who shares that distinction.
Tucky and I met when I was 9…we were playing in a golf tournament.
Jeanne was in my 7th grade class (I was 11 at the start of that year) and we went all the way through high school together.
I met Susan when she was in 7th grade and I was in 8th.
Debby was in Susan’s class, but I didn’t get to know her until high school.
Jody and I became friends our sophomore year in college and ended up rooming together our senior year until I got married.
That is a lot of shared history. We have all married, raised kids, and some of us have grandkids. Some of us still work. Only one of us is still married. Three of us are widows and three are divorced. One of us has had cancer and I’ve lost my husband and son to that horrible disease. We’ve helped each other through surgeries, worked together as volunteers, carpooled, partied, and know way too much about each other.
Friends who are your age are different than friends who are younger or older. You share the same place in the history of the world, you remember the same historical events or events in pop culture from the same age. You are going through the same body changes. When you have grown up together, you know the same people, you went to the same events, you listened to the same music, you know each other’s families. We all need friends from a diversity of ages, but there is something about friends you have known forever that is extremely special. You know the child in each other that is still underneath the aging skin and the graying (or blonding) hair. You forgive all the idiosyncrasies and you know where they are coming from.
“Friends are the family we choose.” I have many groups of friends from different times in my life and all are special. My Breakfast Club holds a special place in my life, my heart. Love you girls!
El Mirage, California, was a place I’d always heard about but didn’t really understand. It’s basically a 6 mile long dry lake used by by fans of off-road vehicles and seen in movies, car commercials and ad shots.
What I really wasn’t prepared for was how much fun it was. When you drive up, it looks like…well, it looks like a flat desert. You can see dusters forming in the distance, fascinating twisters of dirt rising up from the ground to create funnels that race across the landscape. They’re not like the tornadoes of Oklahoma that form in the sky and drop down to scoop up everything in their path.
When you drive at El Mirage, you can literally chase the lake…or the mirage of the lake. You can drive as fast as you can and never catch it. It’s always up ahead of you. I’m not the greatest thrill seeker…I hate heights…but I do like to go fast. At El Mirage, you can drive as fast as you want to because there is nothing to run into unless there are other drivers out there. You can go in circles, drive straight ahead, anything you can imagine. As fast as you can… We saw a couple of motorcycle drivers, but it was quiet on the day we were there. It was a beautiful California sunshine day with a wide open desert, mountains in the background, dusters forming and all you had to do was press the accelerator and go! Awesome fun!
Halloween has become one of the biggest holidays of the year. Back in my day, we dressed up in simple costumes (gypsy, ghost, hobo) or wore the cheap ones from the dime store with the funny mask, grabbed a pillow case and ran up and down the streets trick or treating. My grandmother had candy corn in a dish through Thanksgiving – a sure sign it was fall. After a certain age, we didn’t need our parents with us and ran for blocks, filling our case and coming home for another one. We had sacks of candy (full size bars), popcorn balls, and carmel apples hidden under our beds for weeks. Nobody worried about poison from the neighbors and nobody worried about us getting grabbed off the streets. Sometimes there would be a party with bobbing for apples, cider, popcorn and snacks. I don’t remember ever seeing an adult in costume unless a rare one dressed up as a witch with a caldron of dry ice steaming at the door.
My, how it has changed! By the time my kids were big enough to go out, there were more decorations than just the construction paper cut outs we made. I dreaded the costumes since that really wasn’t one of my strengths, but we muddled through. Occasionally there was a costume party with our friends. In our neighborhood, the dads went out with the kids and you could see them in the streets laughing, drinking a beer, watching the kids run up and down while the moms opened the doors with treats, waving to all. Then that first bit of aspirin was found in candy and people started having private parties and strangers started bringing their kids from the “unsafe” neighborhoods to the nicer ones for treats so we didn’t know who was at the door. That was ok since treats were getting more expensive and I understood those parents wanting to give their kids a better experience with less worry. I was sad when my mother started turning off her lights and pretending she wasn’t home for fear of the big kids who came to the door long after the trick or treating should have ended. It was a new era and Halloween had gotten a little scarier.
By the time I opened my gift shop in 1992, the Halloween phenomenon was an explosion. Decorations were getting pretty fancy and adult parties were the norm. Costumes were more elaborate and the kids I had handed treats were not wanting to stop dressing up. Parties in bars, parties at churches, parties in neighborhoods…Halloween was everywhere! The candy companies got smart and learned the power of packaging with treat sizes and holiday themed wrappers. Smart business! What an array of treat choices we have today with the greatest danger being buying them too early and then having to get more when you realize you have eaten them all way before the holiday.
I still get a kick out of the kids coming to the door. They’re always polite, sometimes shy, sometimes bold. Great costumes. Their parents come right up to the door these days…hovering over the kids. That part is a little sadder. Some of the fun is gone for the kids…but, that’s just my opinion. It’s still a great holiday and I love that it’s enjoyed by all ages! Have a Happy Halloween, come by my house for treats, and be safe out there!
Watching the devastation of Hurricane Sandy unfold is one of the few reasons that 24/7 news is a good thing. Trying to understand the enormity of the impact is going to take awhile to process. I’ve lived through tornadoes, high winds, floods, ice storms, and watched a hurricane approach my location. I both volunteered and worked for the American Red Cross and took disaster training in such things as damage assessment, shelter management, disaster communications and so many other things I’ve forgotten. I actually was on the job during ice storms, 9/11, fires, and small floods. I worked with VOAD (Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster) and first responders in disaster training. It brings me some sense of calm to know that the people who know what to do are in place to assist storm victims in putting their lives back together.
Two things I always remember from all my training is that shelters are opened with the hope of closing as soon as possible. That is the goal. Nobody wants to stay long in a shelter. The other is that the size of the disaster doesn’t matter to the person affected. A single home house fire is a disaster to that family. Disasters come in all sizes.
While vacationing in Florida, my friends and I found ourselves in the path of Hurricane Wilma. We sat for days watching it slowly stall and then make its way in our direction. The news is different in hurricane areas, showing maps of evacuation routes, directions for protecting your family and friends and your property. I noticed that people who go through it a lot had a system. Many had plastic tubs that they packed methodically and packed in their cars, seeming to know what to select to take with them. Making the decision was the hardest part. Many decided to stay, which I can understand. Why try to leave in a long line of cars when you don’t have a place to go, don’t know if there will be gas or rooms? Take your chances and protect your property? Which decision to make. In a tourist area like Florida, there is the problem of those tourists. Restaurants stayed open longer than they wanted to accommodate the visitors. I understand from a business standpoint. When you close for the storm, you are automatically going to lose business, your employees are going to lose income. Tough decisions. For the tourists, there is the issue of getting out of there. What if the flights are full? What if the airports close and all the cars are rented and where do you go anyway?
Cleaning up is the worst after flooding. I’ve been in homes where the mud and debris is soaked into furniture, walls, floors, books, appliances. The smells, the critters, the filth… The good news is that there is a resilience in people that comes out in these times. Even though there are some who take advantage with clean up scams, looting, and other despicable acts, the majority rise up and reach out to each other. Those volunteers I spoke about will be activated and there to lend a hand to help clean up or just to hold. Hugs will abound. Neighbors will bond. Families and friends will be tested and most will realize that they are grateful to have survived. The most haunting image I have of any disaster is of a woman in India after an earthquake. She had lost her home, her business, and 12 members of her family. She was just sitting there. How do you even get the strength to stand up?
My heart goes out to the people affected by this storm. To help them rebuild, give to a reputable charity. Give to the general fund so that surplus funds can be used for other disasters. There will be more disasters, natural and man-made. There always are because that is the way of nature and the world.
I leave you with an image of Hurricane Wilma approaching the Florida coast…how deceptively beautiful it looked before it slammed the area…
Take care.
Is there anything more American than college Game Day? There’s something so unique and fun about the games…the band, the fans, the cheerleaders, the colors, the sounds…
Today, I did something different. A friend and I drove to Stillwater in the morning. The first amazing thing was that we found a free parking space – on campus about a block from the stadium. Wow! That was $20-$30 saved. Then we walked all around the OSU campus, weaving through the tailgaters. Tailgating has skyrocketed from a few people with coolers in the trunk of their cars in the parking lot to full fledged portable kitchens hauled to the tents staked out throughout the buildings and parking lots. It’s the ultimate cookout, potluck dinner, picnic…an industry in itself to buy the team tents, chairs, coolers, games, flags. How do they get cable in those tents to watch the game?
We walked to Eskimo Joe’s in time to walk in while part of the OSU Marching band was playing the Alma Mater, walked back to the Student Union, walked around, grabbed a hamburger in the Union and back in time to watch the OSU Walk as Pistol Pete, the band, cheerleaders and pom squad led the team through a fan-lined street to the stadium. Awesome! I got teary hearing the fight song in the flood of orange and black, sprinkled with fans costumed for Halloween and the game…perfect school colors for the holiday. Once we got the team into the stadium, we made our way through the crowd going into the stadium, walked back to the car and drove home with no crowds, arriving in time to light a fire and watch the entire game on television with the feel of fall and the stadium sounds still fresh in our ears. I love going to the actual games, but this was kind of fun. We got all the vibes with no traffic.
And they won! Good job, Cowboys! Go Pokes!!!
When I started this blog, it was to get myself writing again. I found some pieces I wrote 5-10 years ago that are pretty good. I thought about recycling them, but they are too long & sometimes too personal. I’m trying to find a new rhythm for this new format. I wrote about autumn or fall quite a bit in those other writings. Most of the time I was remembering precious fall memories of hunters and holidays and changing seasons.
Today, I was trying to decide if this is the autumn of my life. Or is the winter? It sure isn’t the spring or the summer. I’m not trying to be morbid – just trying to see where I fit into the poetic metaphor of the seasons of our lives. What I decided after not much thought is that we don’t make that decision. The poetry doesn’t fit because we don’t know how long we have to live. For some people, the autumn of their life could be at 35 or 15 or 55. The seasons of life thing only works if you live a long enough life to make it into a pretty division of the cycles you have been through.
My conclusion of that random line of thinking is that we should stop thinking about it and just enjoy the changing of the seasons for all the days we have given to us. Right now, I’m going to watch the leaves change colors and the flickering of the first fire of the season and take it all into my heart full of memories. Lovely…
