The Adventures of Talis and Littlefoot: Part 2

Stranger encamped in Deep Woods

The next dawn broke with a light drizzle that slowly faded into a dull, gray morning. Wisps of cold fog blew in off the Brown River, settled around the trees and wet the grass with icy cold dew. Not wanting to run into any of Scar Man's Friends or anyone who could remember her from the Inn at the West Gate of New Town, they skirted the walls to the Southern Gate.

Stranger picked their way between peddler's carts and tented stalls, flocks of geese and pens with new lambs in them as they headed towards the Gate sentries. The two armored guards had the bored look of long time, nothing to do on them, but they did glance over her scarlet red hair, fair skin and full bosom with a spark of interest as she rode past. They also eyed Stranger's tall, muscular frame and straightened up a bit as if some bone memory reminded them that they were in the presence of one of the old war horses that could plow through an unmounted foot division and send the soldiers rolling like child's toys.

Littlefoot chattered from under her cloak.

"The thinkers don't bother me. It's the doers like we had visit us last night that get my blood up", she laughed at his opinion about the guards thoughts as she stared them down with a raised brow and sea-green eyes. It was a good thing that Littlefoot and Stranger were casual when it came to her tussles with Rowan. Those lascivious thoughts could really cause some problems if they had not accepted him!

Rowan's face with his liquid brown eyes and mane of black curls came to her with a jolt. She went all soft thinking about his powerful shoulders and strong legs.

"I miss my friends, too! I can't wait to see Firewynd and Rolf and Pudge"! Littlefoot chattered. Stranger nickered his deep horse laugh as visions of the mares of Small Wood Village ran by her mind from his inner eye.

"Gods, we're all a randy bunch! Better make for home sometime soon", Talis thought as she urged Stranger down a small and familiar back alley.

#

Vilene was standing just outside her doorway in the stone building that housed her shop and home. Her gray hair and wizened face lit up on seeing Talis and she opened up a toothless smile to welcome them. Bright blue eyes still sparkled from mountains and valleys of wrinkles.

A blond haired and well built young man appeared from inside just as Talis dismounted and went to one knee to show her respect for an Elder. Vilene touched Talis' head and Talis leaped up to engulf her in a bear hug.

"How's Vi been, Bret"? Talis signed behind Vi's back still hugging the old woman.

Bret signed back a short comment. With a soundless laugh, he put thumb and forefinger on either side of his nose, then together for an "okay" signal, chin jutted out rakishly exposing the thin silvery scar on his throat ear to ear. Talis released Vilene, laughed and grabbed Bret in his turn.

"What's he say about me behind my back, Talis? He's always being fresh with me, you know", Vi said with a curled lip.

"He said, 'You fart big and snore loudly' "! Talis answered.

Vilene pretended to be angry and embarrassed thwacking Bret on the head and shoulder with a bunch of dried herbs, which scattered into the air leaving behind a sweet and pungent odor. Bret fended her off with outstretched arms and a soundless laugh, planting a cheeky kiss on her old forehead in reply.

"For one with no voice, you certainly manage to be mouthy! Go see to those teas we're to deliver to the Old Lord's kitchen for his gout this afternoon or I'll disown you"!

Bret turned to go inside as Littlefoot leaped from Stranger's back to his. Bret swung the ferret around and buried his face in Littlefoot's musky belly leaving his grandmother and Talis to parley.

Vilene gratefully took the big packet of meteless Talis pulled from her saddlebag. "This root is getting harder to come by each year", Vi said appreciatively as she sniffed the dank and sandy purple roots and fingered the tiny hairs on their sides. The roots squirmed a bit from the tickling and satisfied of their freshness, Vi gently tucked them into a muslin bag that appeared from the folds of her voluminous blue apron.


"I've asked you two to move back to Small Wood where there's plenty of fresh herbs! You know that you have Her permission to search even as far as the Cairn for your needs! I'm sure She'd let Bret help you! This place grows more intolerant and dangerous every day! Your old house has been kept up since you've been here. Just give the word and I'll send Click and Rowan to pack for you, root and knob".

"I'm not ready to go back to the woods just yet, young missy! There's still plenty of business and money for and old herb woman, even if I do get Punts passing by and preaching at me. For all their talk of heresy, they're more than happy to pilfer my unguents and medicines in Shon-ar's name. Especially the virility root". Vi took the packets of greens and teas from Bret as he returned outside, Littlefoot draped around his neck like a fur scarf.

"Besides. You know that there's other work here to do", she shot Talis a sidelong glance. Talis pursed her lips, sighed and nodded her acquiescence.

The second packet Talis removed held a huge black wool shawl with an intricate woven border for Vilene and a small sheathed knife for Bret. Click had made the leaf-shaped blade for him and Talis had stitched together the leather sheaf, molding it in hot water to snugly fit the outline of the knife. Knife in hand and an enthusiastic kiss for Talis, Bret went around back with Little foot to practice his knife throwing.



"Remember to balance the haft in your hand before you throw. Think of your target, see the blade go there and throw! Smoothly" ! Talis' voice followed him. She turned to Vilene and followed her inside the shop.

"I've a list of needs from you, now. Let's have some of that warming salve, a large packet of smoke-herb, rust leaf, and the medicines on this list to start. Some dried apples and pears would be welcome for us and just a few raisins for Littlefoot if you have them.

' And if you happen to have a suitable rabbit as friend for Colt..." Talis trailed off. Vilene would know that Colt would never be capable of the familiar bond almost all of her kind were capable of. That didn't stop the youngster from wanting to have a 'pet' at his side like the other young ones in the Village.

Looking around at hanging bunches of herbs, pots and jars of liquids and potions, books and bones and parchments, the smell in the shop was a blend of astringent and floral with something else just below the surface - not unpleasant, but not to be messed with by the uninitiated. Talis fingered one of her silver traced amulets clamped tight to her hair just above her temple.

"I have just the one", Vi said as she disappeared into a back room returning a moment later with a black and white rabbit. She handed the soft creature to Talis to hold as the old woman set about filling the rest of Talis' order.

"Food"? "No Friend"...

"Food"? Littlefoot asked hopefully from Bret's shoulder in the doorway, naturally nosey to see what she was getting.

"Friend", Talis answered, amused at his obvious disappointment. "For Colt".

(Note: The Misty Morning is by Cdemo on Flicker. Littlefoot above is from the National Park Services site. The herbs are from one of my beautiful herb books. The gorgeous leaf shaped blade was channeled up by and can be bought for a pittance of it's worth from the forges of Valhalla Arms.)

Stripper's Kimono Update

The 1920s style kimono is to the hand work stage. I should have had it finished by now, but everyday stuff got in the way. All the hems are done and I'm shooting for hand-stitching the sleeve linings and collar down. The bias tube for the kimono frog is made and will be applied - with beads! - after the finish work.

Also cut out a mini kimono for Cindy's daughter, Sky who's following in her mother's footsteps. She's one of the Hollywood Blonds in the play, too. Her kimono has trim of her mom's brocade and a purple satin body since there wasn't enough of the butterfly brocade to do a whole kimono.

I also dyed some stretch knit sheer for a pair of practice wings so Cindy can block her scenes. 'Blocking' is where the director places the actors in their spots on stage for each particular scene, runs them through the choreography and movement in relation to the scenery, props and other actors so that it looks smooth. Considering Cindy's wings are going to be quite the space taker, I thought I'd run up a pair of non-detailed surrogate wings while I work on the real thing.

I'm missing a cat since yesterday morning. Loverboy went outside after breakfast and I haven't seen him since even though I've looked and called. I miss him and wish he'd come home.

Also discovered that I threw away a cardboard box of writings from several years as trash. I'm in a delete mode around here but did not intend to do that. I'm philosophical about it since I really can't retrieve it. There's a message of letting go of the past here. I'm trying.

More pictures later on.

Pam commented on the Blue Moon post:

Hi. I have been trying to think of what to say but can't think of anything except, I am so sorry about your friends and I can't imagine what they (and you) are going through. Do you believe that our spirits live on (in other dimensions)? I struggle with it; it seems impossible but at the same time I've heard and read stories from people that makes me ponder. - Pam

Little Beauty, I have already wept, wailed, wallowed, and cursed for them all many times over enough to fulfill any lamenting custom in several lands. I know I'm being selfish about it, especially in Sally Jo's case because I just want them HERE, not THERE. When I wah for them, it's the blindered side of my Inner Child having a temper tantrum because some really fun playmates are leaving my party.

Death IS life! It's SIDS for Seniors. We Americans have a tendency to overlook that. I'd like to thank the predominant cultural religions for that: You die, you go before your god, get judged pretty harshly for your worldly stupidities, and depending on whether you ascribe to the Vatican, Yaweh, Mohammed, or to Dante Alighieri, you're sent to various hotspots around the universe with varying degrees of unpleasantries.

I personally think all this is an opague attempt at trying to control the masses and whip them into shape. Support the church, pay the tithes, follow the leader, even if the leader is telling you to believe some really stupid and irrational things. Crowd control. Think Jim Jones, the Inquisition, the 'Holy Wars', Jihad.

I lean towards taking the responsibility of my own actions while here and cutting out the middleman or priest to intercede for me as best I can. I know what kind of Didoes I pull that I shouldn't have - I was THERE when I did it. It cuts down on the coin, lets you sleep late on holy days, but more importantly, the guilt is incised right out of the mix.

So. We're scared to death of death and it's consequences, which I believe makes us bale on life, too. We don't want to face the big D so we live as if there will be no tomorrow wasting our time on piddling shit and overlooking the fact that this is a really good theme park here with lots to see and do.

As for our spirits living on, I've had this proven to me a number of times. I wrote about one physical manifestation of this in 'The Afterlife of Sam, The Dog' in January 2007. I've also talked to the dead on many occaisions. Before you reach for the Straight 8 - the jacket with eight formal ties, try asking the 'out there' for some help on an everyday project. It's fun and informative. I 'talk' to my dad all the time to ask for help with things mechanical or carpentry because he was a worldly ace with it. I more often than not get an amazingly quick solution on how to do something that I've not done before, something totally not in the vein I was thinking. Ascribe this to spiritism or Psychology 101. I don't really care as long as it works.

I wrote almost every single college paper on autodrive using the same approach. Whether you want to call this savantism or that I possibly could have been given the ideas, and sometimes, footnotes to support them from an outside source is up to you. I've quit trying to persuade folk around to my view of living.

Can I give you some directions on where to start your query on why I think psychism and 6th sense issues are real? Read " I am Psychic", also from January of this year. Read some of the new books out on fuzzy and quantum physics.

So, young Padowan, let Yoda be your guide on this matter. Remember the training of Luke. Listen, you should. Buy or rent the entire set of philosopher George Lucas' works and watch them.

When it comes right down to it, each of us has to believe in our own theories. I just offer mine. But one thing I know as utter, unmitigatable truth is that when Death happens, it won't matter what your beliefs or theories are. What awaits us (or not) will be there.

It is what it is.

You know now that it was the blue moon in May, as in ‘Once in a blue moon’ - two full moons in the same month? Well. Yes. Annie, Teresa and I used this to go on a Red Eye Turnaround to Augusta, Georgia to see Sally Jo.

You’ll also guess if you’re a reader that I tend to pidge around when I have something serious to write about. Just one tiny bitty bit of chicken shit to my nature of balls out, hair afire, Mach 10, 60 MPH in one spot. So. Sally’s dying, don’t you know.

She has this shit ass illness called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, as I've told you. It’s a wicked bad disease that mimics Parkinson’s and Lou Gerhigs Disease. She’ll die by choking. I watched her suffer through several of these spasms as she tried to eat orally on our visit. She refuses to give up the taste of food even though she’s intubated for direct meals and medications through a tube in her abdomen.

Sally always was stubborn like that. She refused to give up on me when I was a non-responsive basket case drooling on the sofa and contemplating a trip to the woods with Sara Jane, my Rueger. She and Carol Gray saw to it that I went on holiday to the hospital.

She refused to give up on her kids, too, her sisters, and any of the cases she ever worked as a deputy sheriff. Murderers confessed to her and showed her where they hid the bodies when they talked to no one else. Loonies told her about ‘Wonderment Sticks’ and I made one for her to shake at the most reprobate of speeders complete with grape root windy-ness and jewels to get them to slow down. She keeps it under the pix of me and her and Carol.

And she’s refusing this goddamn awful disease that will eat her nerve responses until every neuron in her tall ass ole body just shuts down and quits.

I told Katy and Sue to fly me up and we’ll see her out together. None of us want her to choke to death (a horrid way to go) and we hope that she’ll fall into a peaceful coma and sleep herself into the afterlife. If not, I hope the medicoes have the cajones to help her out.

I’ve thought much about the Three Norns with all this illness and dying. The Three Norns or Fates, the Great Wyrd Sisters who card and spin the skein of our life, then weave us into being, determine the length of our days, and then cut us from the weft of experience and age when we have wended our way to the other side ever recycling,

I read my mama the Book Of Fates by Z. Budapest on the stages of life – one that I was reviewing for the International newspaper, Goddessing championed and published by friend Willow Lamont - as she was dying under the aegis of Hospice in 1999. I read the last pages and squeezed the book Z wrote – something you do when a read has been so good and you could find no other words than The End or the copyright page. Ma looked up from the bed and said, ‘Just in time’. And it was. She passed very shortly afterward. I will love anything Z Budapest writes from here on out because of that book.

Now. Besides Sally Jo, I have my mentor Shirley DesRochers in a pickle in Tampa General Hospital with a hell of a hack and whack job on her colon for diverticulitis. This is the latest in several of them and she’s been fighting fistulas, infections, and you put on plastic when you go in to see her. She left me a fatalistic message on my machine before she went in over a month ago. I save it because she tells me what a good, good friend I’ve been to her. They told her there would be no more surgeries. She doesn't have enough colon yet to digest a taco, let alone take a shit.

I promised her tonight when I trudged up huffing to the 8^thfloor from a parking lot that was built in the back forty that I’d bring my cards and play straight with her when I read to say what I see. She asked me. I will. No matter how grim the news. She can take it. She has gonads, too.

Death doesn’t scare me personally. I just hate to leave a mess. And. I hate to be left behind by all the enormous Goddess women and men my life has wrapped around. Doesn’t seem quite right, although the sidekicks and good guys always get whacked in the movies.

When I gack, I hope some friend will write a line or two about me saying that they missed whatever quality about me that struck them as worthy. I know that I shall miss my girls and their faces.

Pissed Off Cat

I just had to share this with you. Granted. The language is more than graphic, but it spoke to my heart. I had a drive and did close to the same thing at every car rolling by, innocent or not. When I realized what I was doing, I started laughing at myself. Talk about Road Rage!

I watch people in cars. I know that's unusual. We're set up to just watch the car as if IT was alone and making decisions to accelerate, brake, turn, hesitate or just cruise. It's a little like being in Christine, the movie about the maelific car who deliberately tries to kill folk.

So. I open the mailbox and here sits Pissed Off Cat sent to me by Martha. M says she got a note from her sister, Celia in Alabama who was tempted to do a genealogy search to see if their family was related to the cat in any way. M allowed that it could be the case.

Cars are our last bastion of privacy. We can pick our nose, sing, curse, think and even scream (ahem) on occaision - all with impugnity. That is, until Homeland Security figures out how to listen in by building bugging and homing devices in every Detroit model.

Mother's Day

There will be no cards, no call, no declaration of love from my one and only child. I am a scourge to him. The beautiful child who was a miracle to my life has me as anathema to his as he became a man.

He has just cause for many psychoses we all bequeath our children, even if we try our damndest not too. After all. How many couches would go bare in psychiatrist’s office if we didn't have someone to blame all the pestilence and ill luck that burgeons in our lives as we grow up. Someone to blame like our mothers. He could claim that I wasn't there a good bit of his growing up time and he'd be right. I was not there. I was dealing with juggling three different hats just trying to put food on the table and a roof over our heads.

And, don't you know that his father and I played the eternal tug of war many single mothers and divorced fathers play - a begrudging fight for every dime of the paltry sum the courts awarded me monthly to raise a boy to a man without one. I went five years without any payment whatsoever as my ex moved on to wife number two and then number three, had other children and declared that he indeed had a family to worry about and couldn't understand why I nagged him about paying money for his first born on my first call to him in five years.

I had requested a pair of shoes from my ex because I noticed my son running funny and asked him what was wrong. He told me that he folded his toes under in his old shoes because he knew that I didn't have money to buy him any for his growing feet and that it was okay. He understood. So.

I located the ex and asked for a new pair of sneakers. This is when I got the sentence about being a nag. This is after five years of no calls and just hope that he'd find a conscience and pay up. This is when I got pissed and contacted the state to help intervene. This is just one of the setups some of us mothers get from the 'system'.

He may also blame me for his father's absence and failure to pick him up on scheduled visits. I don't now how to convince him that his dad really did want to be with another woman and was sorry about getting all obligated by impregnating me. I don't know how to convince him that there was nothing I could have done to make his father continue to love and treasure us both and to stay. I don't know how to convince him that my best friend of the time was much more appealing than a dowdy housewive with a two year old. It's the system.

Now. When I speak of the system, I am talking the whole stink, soup to nuts. You see. We do not really honor motherhood. Ah yes, you say. There's mother's day, the whole American charm bracelet with mom, home and apple pie on it. There is this patriarchal meringue we're fed about how mothers and children are important. Not really. And then there is this outer system and society that sets up dodgy sitches for us if we do become mothers: Where was/is the health care system so we don't have to beg for school shots and treatment for recurrent earaches? Where was/is the judicial system that really makes sure that child support really supports a child instead of throwing pocket change at an already really skinny situation like groceries being on a wish list? Where was/is the community that helps with child care, psychological services, help with a damn day off? Where was/are the wages that honestly allow a woman on her own to afford a decent life for her offspring?

Am I bitter? No. Simply older, wiser and disgusted by the crumbs that are thrown at women one day a year in this country. Elsewhere on the globe, women are chattel - much like mules. Women endure wars, rape as part of the psychology of warfare, early death from multiple pregnancies, fistulas when they are forced to bear children at eleven and twelve years old and their tiny wombs burst. Women are sold as sex slaves, forced into prostitution for the animals that connive to get them there and then live off of the income from those female bodies like fat ticks. Women are aborted in India, China and many other countries because women are not as valuable to society as males. They are killed or abandoned at birth in some countries so that the natural population ratio is skewed towards males making it difficult to find them wives when they grow up. Women have little or no control over the birth and rearing that their bodies are subjected too. It's all decided elsewhere by men and religions and governments who will never have the experience and never understand the risks.

We women are set up from birth to endure all this as our lot. Forget the fact that it is women that give birth and nurture life. Several centuries of male dominated religions, government and HISstory have left us this legacy. We. Women. The unclean. The unable to handle public office or education or jobs that we very damn well did when necessity was on us - thank you Rosie the Riveter. It wasn't all that long ago that we were given the vote in good ole U S of A.

So our jobs as mothers are set up double hard against us by our society, our religions and especially by the male children that we bear. Do you know that women do more than 90% of the work and labor on this planet? Do you understand why we're molested and beaten? We're the only species that I know of who give birth to our own predators.

So I secretaried, read cards, sold stuff at flea markets and craft shows - anything legal to earn enough for us to live. Of course, those long days and seven days a week often left little time for the real mothering I would have liked to have done. Could I have done better? You bet your ass. But I did the best that I could with the material I had on hand and the time allotted to me in the days.

I hope at some point he does see a counselor. I hope he curses me and squalls and rolls around on the floor in front of that counselor. I hope he's given some tools to cope with and take responsibility for his addictions and shortcomings. I hope that he can clear his eyes and see that the people he replaced me with sold him out, including his friend, the drug dealer. I hope at some point he will man up and see that I am not the cause of his financial problems, his drug exploits, his sex life and the inner unhappiness he may feel. I hope he sees that I never abandoned him, never gave up on him, even when he gave up on me. I hope he sees at some point that I really, truly do love him regardless and that he is the one that has seen fit to cut something wonderful out of his life. That was the last thing I said to him when I saw him the end of 2004.

Oh. I have others who do call and wish me a good day each year. They are surrogate children who come to me to talk over their problems or when they need my help or just to enjoy my company. Imagine that. I welcome them. Buddy calls and comes over to install an air conditioner in the spare room. He also just calls to see how I am. He was a best friend to my son growing up and spent a majority of his time here. He calls me mom. Vanessa calls from Naples where she is running with the jet set and busy being beautiful and a wonderful success. She calls me mama. Demetria calls and we exchange wishes for each other. She calls me honey. Darla calls to let me know that she's thinking of me, too. She calls me Other Mother or Shamanamama. My girlfriends all call and we exchange wishes too. We call each other Love You at the end of a conversation.

I really want everyone to start practicing the lofty ideals today is held up for. It really would be Mother's Day if the whole planet practiced the Law of the Mother - nurture, no wars, no putting more burdens on any person or system than it was meant to handle, true support for women in all that they do to rear young and produce good people. If we truly supported mothers, we’d be thinking about the rape and exploitation of our planet – the one really Big Mother we all depend on. We’d quit digging, blasting, boring, deforesting, overpopulating, polluting, bombing, genetically altering, testing nukes, strip mining and dumping our shit all over her.

Forget one day a year to drag out the accolades. Want to impress me? Let me see Mothers being appreciated the other 364 days of the year.

Swimming In The Big Creek

So. Linda Conner and I sat on the deck outside the room she's living in at Dogpatch this evening and talked about the heat. It is a matter of fact here in Florida. We are the Northernmost Caribbean Colony, don't you know. Listed temperate wise as Subtropical, having palms, beaches, and many of the denizens of the tropics flying by and nesting, we also have subtropical weather. It's hot in the summer. And sticky like sex.

Linda mentioned that she brought her bathing suit from Maryland and allowed as how she had swam in the Potomac. She said she remembered to pack the suit thinking that she'd go to the YMCA or the beach. "Posh. Tish. There's a 300 foot wide and three to four hundred foot deep channel cut right off the back of Dogpatch", I says. Adding that all she need be on the lookout for is water snakes and amorous gators during season. SWFTMUD (SwiftMud - the local water management authority in Southwest Florida) keeps them culled out.

The water is clear and cool and serves as the reservoir for drinking water here in the Tampa Bay area and points south. Okay. Hopefully, I won't pee in it. Fish are abundant and mostly left unmolested except by a few local fishers and water birds like Heron, Grey and Brown Pelicans, Eagles, Falcons, Cormorants, Seagulls and Terns. The fish grow so big that the big birds often drop them on lawns - instant cerviche.

The neighborhood kids across the canal know what kids have known for Millennia - that the water was made for swimming. Indeed. I swam these very same shores as a young girl when it was Six Mile Creek and before the Army Corps of Engineers came in to better it. There were small waterfalls then. And palms, palmettos, magnolias, vines big enough to hold a full-grown man. Gators, Florida Panther and Brown Bear thrived alongside Gopher Tortoises. They are all gone from the bed of that once lush and mystical place of my youth. They were bulldozed and bermed against the natural flooding that made sure this land was fertile and welcome for many species.

Instead of the meandering zees of the natural creek bed, the Army Engineers made sure that it was tamed into a nice, straight line. The Army likes everything straight, including their soldiers. They blasted the natural blowholes of springs, which fed the Creek. Those springs turned the water a lily blue and the underwater sand landscape lunar white. Water in Florida only gets brown when the leaves from oak and other indigenous trees tincturate it with tannins from the leaves when they fall in.

I swam in it then. One of a long succession of Florida denizens behind Temuccuans, Seminole, Florida Crackers who gathered wild Spanish cattle out of the underbrush to build their ranch herds. I'll swim in it now that it has lost all but a whisper of its original beauty and majesty. Maybe it will wash off some of the years I've accumulated since then. But, I'm sure the waters will do the same thing to me now as they did then. Chill.

Panther

I was ten years old the first time I saw God. This huge canal I live on was then just a creek that meandered for six or so miles draining into the Alafia River, then into Cockroach Bay which shelters fish nurseries and scallop beds.

I spent many hours there in defiance of my mother who extolled the dangers of those wild woods . She warned me about escaped prisoners who sometimes ran from the county jail downstream and hid there amid the palmettos. To her mind, those men were more to fear than the gators and snakes that she had come upon there when she defied her mother to go visit the creek in her youth.

Never saw any escaped prisoners. Me and the neighborhood kids once saw a body floating down under the train trestle when we'd gone down there to swim. We found out later that it was a drunk that stumbled into the creek and drowned out behind the Six Mile Creek tavern upstream. But nothing live ever appeared moving on two feet with steely eyes the color of stones bent on murder and mayhem to a child . So I continued to go. Mostly by myself.

There were small springs and pools surrounded with Louisiana irises, elephant ears big enough to use as an umbrella when brief, angry summer storms came up. Paths wound their way around stands of palmetto and water oaks, the sand sparkled in the sun from quartz or mica flecks like diamonds beckoning you on. Huge woody liana vines were a favored pastime to play a wannabe Tarzan. One of my favorite trees was a huge magnolia growing formally in the midst of all the gangly oaks. I loved the glossy leaves and would fashion a crown out of the dinner plate sized blossoms. I sniffed in the heady fragrance of them until my face was yellow with pollen and I was almost drugged from the rich smell.

Sometimes, I would just sit on the banks of the stream watching fish or making stick villages on the sandy paths. I knew how to pull young palmetto shoots to chew off the tender pink-white flesh on the root end and there were huckleberrys and fox grapes aplenty. Whenever things at home got out of control, I sought the comfort of that swamp.

My sister Lynda and me once went to cross the creek at Masaro's cattle crossing - normally just shin deep. But there'd been a hurricane three days before and we were swept away by the clawing current that had undercut the sandy bottom. We swan diagonally to the bank, catching a branch and then quickly letting go when the current occupant - a cotton mouth mocassin - objected with a hiss. We finally made the other side at a steep curve in the creek path, me pulling Lynn out of the water behind me.

She laughed the whole escapade through. I was a bit more sober for my three years on her and knew that we had been very lucky not to have been pulled into a gator hole or an undertow. I'd had my share of stupid living playing chicken on the train trestle that spanned the creek as it blew a frantic warning to my skinny, small form. I would dive into the waters when I could feel the rails vibrate and see the dust snake up from the heavy ties sitting on their bed of quartz rip-rap. I only did it a couple of times. News of a neighborhood boy who lost a leg while trying to jump onto a box car and ride down to his road somehow sunk home. I used to wonder if they ever found the rest of his leg and what they did with it.

Crossing Masaro's Dairy pasture was another wag at danger. If you timed it just right, you could cut off a good bit of leg work by cutting through the back corner. You had to ease yourself through the strands of barb wire and mind you didn't tear your shirt or your skin, both of which assured a march to the switch tree in the back yard. Mr. Masaro kept Brahma bulls in his herd for beef and they policed the pasture with a vigor to be admired by any Green Beret unit looking on any intruder as a threat to their territory and dominance over the few heifers peaceably grazing .

The trick was to time it so that the bulls were on the other side of the big pasture with their asses to you. You had to get through the barb wire fence on the quick and silent, high tail it the long block to the other fence, then skinny your way through that one before you were spotted. I once spent a miserable afternoon in a live oak with Brahma's grazing and farting below until their simple cow minds wandered them off to the far side of the pasture and it was safe to shinny down the tree and out through the fence to home again.

It was on one of these successful shortcuts that I saw Him. I was slowly and silently picking my way through the late morning sun along my favorite path. On both sides, palmetto fans waved in the dappled sun filtering through Spanish Moss beards in the trees above. He came out of a palmetto stand on the path before me, all dusky gold and brown and shining. His eyes glowed like amber. A long, pink tongue panted out his rhythm between sparkling white teeth that looked about a foot long.

He was a big cat, fully grown, sleek and fat. We both stood stock still, regarding each other. Six steps would have carried me to him, so close I could smell the musky fur, but I was still, quiet. I do not remember being afraid. I remember being in a place of awe. The wind stopped. The trees and branches absolutely fixed. The air danced with an energy I've seen so very few times since. I don't know how long we stood looking at each other, but it seemed like forever and a second.

A blink, then two, he just melted into the palmetto stand across the path from me and didn't move a branch or crack a twig under His big feet. After all, I was nothing to concern Himself over. Aware that something very special had happened to me, I felt privaledged. Knowing it was special and had not happened to very many people, I knew I could tell no one. I was also positive that despite my knowing that I'd spent a moment in utter holiness and divinity, an ass whipping would have awaited the disclosure and would surely have spoiled that moment.

I became obsessed with religion, God, divinity, the spiritual path. Sometimes my reading was uplifting. Other times, it was dark and morose. Mostly, religion was confusing.

I asked to go to the Methodist church next to my elementary school with Patty Brian and was allowed. I found disappointment there when I would here the message of brotherhood extolled at the pulpit and the petty sniping and gosip aimed at a poor family from my neighborhood. I went a second time to be sure that this confusion of Christian message, Hades behavior was indeed not a fluke and quit.

I am also saddened that such a majestic creature should be in the twilight of their lives with diminishing numbers hovering around 100 of them. Texas cougars have been introduced into the gene pool in hopes of replenishing the species. The offspring are lighter in color and much smaller than the big male I remember. Maybe it is because I was so small and thin.

Over the years, this sacred and special moment when I was indeed in the presence of something both graceful and divine has become incorporated into my spirituality. I don't think I've ever told the tale whole to anyone. It is my miracle, my introduction to sacredness. Now you have it. Trying to explain how and why I was so affected at such an early age would also somehow sadden the colors of it. Perhaps it will recall your first discovery of something sacred outside of yourself. So I'll leave it to you.

The art above is by Edward Bierly and can be puchased from the National Wildlife Federation.

Waiting Room

I had a wonderful thing happen the day that I went for my laser surgery. Amazing that in the midst of all the angst about loosing half my eyesight that wonderfulness could happen, but it did. See. I'm taking you back to make up for the things that happened in February that I should have posted if I could.

The torn retina was diagnosed in Brandon and my Opthomologist sent me to Lakeland Regional Hospital eye clinic for the laser process. I called Phyllis McEwen to drive me. If you've had your eyes examined, you know the 10-4 on waiting around with the eye drops to dilate, or numb or both. So. There we were in the waiting room with me dilating away. We were in the waiting room with three middle aged women and one ancient charmer.

Miss Connie was 83 years old, she informed us. Her still dark hair was done up in huge Marcelle waves plastered close to the scalp making her look like Josephine Baker from the 1920s. Phyllis began it all by asking Miss Connie what she liked to do.

"Why, I cook, baby!" Miss Connie said. "But not just cook, I like to fix it up, make it look special, decorate it with apples, celery sprigs, and parsely and radishes!"

"Can you cook greens?" Phyllis asked as culinary explorer and emcee. "I've been craving me some greens. How 'bout sweet potato pie?"

"Absolutely! The secret's in the washin' and the seasonin' and what you use for it." A note here to the Northern Provinces - 'seasoning' in the South when greens are in the same paragraph bespeaks meat and fat - ham hocks, pork butt roast or shoulder, streak-o-lean, bacon.

"I'm hungry for soul food, Southern food. What you gonna cook me?" Phyllis pressed on.

"Well, let's see now. 'Sides greens - and what kind of greens you want, baby - mustard, collards, or turnip?"

"Oh, collards, of course, please ma'am!" Phyllis was really getting us all into this now. We Southerners are truly mindful of our manners and respect for our elders.

"Well, 'sides greens, you got to have you a good old ham baked up right so's the crust is dark brown and crunchy and the insides are just juicy as you carve off the slices."

"Deviled eggs!", chimed in one of our group. "I want some potato salad!" , chirped another.

"Corn bread made in a black iron skillet on the top of the stove before you pour in the batter to make a good crust!", I offered for my contribution.

The third woman added, "Buttermilk biscuits, big and flaky and loaded with real butter!"

"Speaking of butter, how 'bout corn on the cob!"
"Baby limas with some of the ham!"
"Field peas with snaps!"
"Or zipper peas!"
"Fried chicken with a good scald on it!"
"Fried green tomatoes!"
"Fried okra!"
"Fried anything without a commercial telling you it will clog your arteries!"

We were all running with it and laughing. We discussed fried catfish and hush puppies with grits, the merits of sweet potato pie, the perfect pecan pie, and other mouth watering morsels women have been cooking in Southern kitchens for centuries.

I asked Miss Connie how she fried her chicken. She stuck out a bony hand, palm up and said, "It'll cost you, honey." Then she proceeded to tell us how she fixed gator tail, "And you do chicken the same way!"

"I sew. What kind of dress you want, ma'am?", I asked Miss Connie.

"Baby, I want a pink frock that fits with an A-line skirt! And a jacket."

"You want sweetheart pink, or bubble gum pink?", I'm getting my details in order, don't you know.

"A good pink, not pastel or baby, not hot and all neon. A good pink."

A design is emerging. "How long do you want the skirt, mid-calf?"

"Laws, no, honey! I want it to come just to the middle of my knee cap. I got some good legs and I like to show them off!" And she did show off extending a still shapely calf. "And I want pretty work on the cuffs of the jacket."

I designed two more dresses for other women and discovered we had a racy sex goddess sitting with us in the guise of a 50 something housefrau dressed in the most sensible shoes you've ever seen.

We all joined in with comments about shoes, hose, girdles, how we never used to leave the house without a pair of gloves or a hat.

"I wear me some hats! I spray paint them ole straws and glue decorations on them. If it ain't tacky enough, why I just glue on some more stuff until it is. Then I wear it to church." Miss Connie animated all of this in mime and finished with a flourish, hand on hip, a remarkably spry and flirty sashay as she walked down the aisle to her imaginary pew.

Then we continued designing dresses in our minds until we were gotten to continue the process, one by one.

This is a familiar phenomenon I've observed throughout my life: Women get together as strangers in a laundromat, at the doctor's office, the hospital waiting for news of a loved one's surgery, and we talk. We seem to know from some long entrenched gene that we group together and pull the wagons in. The chatter helps entertain us, passes the time, let's us know we're not alone in this Cosmic Cottilion. We usually touch topics that tribe us up - cooking, kids, the drill.

And Phyllis did exactly what she'd set out to do with this ancient custom. She distracted me from the worry I was feeling with a baked ham, fried gator, and a hat.

Molly's Gone

I read that newspaper columnist and writer Molly Ivins passed from her bout with breast cancer. I'll miss her. She was a hellraiser that managed to get the ridiculous antics of politicians everywhere across for what they were with humor and satire.

Martha sent me this link that has a film clip on it of Molly's "Dildo Diaries". There is language and images that may be offensive to some, but no matter what your bent, she will show you the idiocy that passes for government.

Visitors

Sasha called me from Valdosta. She is on her way to visit a friend in Tampa and wants to see her old Auntie while here. Anastasia Lynda Maria Kerik-Coglianese is the only living reminder I have that I had a sister - viable and real. She is called 'Sasha' , a nod to her Siberian ancestry that lies atop her Italian paternal surname. Her mother was murdered and left in the Yuma River in Arizona like so much flotsam in 1986.

I haven't seen Sasha in four years since she called me from 2 miles up the road four years ago to announce that she was bringing 'friends' ...which consisted of two gay men, one a transvestite, and a young woman of questionable bent. They stayed at Dog Patch a varying amount of time up to 2 months - except for Kent, who really wanted a change from his background of managing MacDonald's restaurants. Kent stayed two years and continued to find a life in Florida. The rest went home in dribs and drabs, Sasha included. She tired of the slow cotillion here at DP.

Such are the vagaries of youth. I used to do the same thing at their age - my early 20s. I was footloose and could go where the wind carried. No longer. Age seems to have weighted me down in ways hard to describe to you. But you know. We no longer can pick up and waft away on the breeze like an unfettered dandelion blossom when we age. We seem to need more than the iron in Geritol to hold us to the Earth. It's as if our fractious bones are ready and able to pick up and fly without leathered flesh to the next realm at any moment.

So. I am looking forward to seeing my Baby Girl. I fell in love with her at the Tampa International Airport in the 1970s when her tiny squirm of a body was thrust at me for the first time. Lynn and Ed had come to meet me at the airport. I wished that I had been around for her growing up when she was without her mother. But I was engaged with struggles of my own and could not afford forays out to rescue anyone else.

Now, she is grown up. I can tell her stories of her mother, including confirming that her bent for travel comes from her mom. Lynn was always up for an adventure, including an unexpected trip to Columbia that happened on the way to college classroom. She came home with an incredible emerald, stories to tell and no homework.