Author: Old Soul Medicine Crow

Feet planted firmly on the earth. Head in the ethereal universe. Eyes open to how everything is connected. Writer, gardener, spiritual seeker, daughter, mother, grandmother, wise woman in the making. Turn off the news of the world, turn on the messages of the Universe. Listen, learn, be better.

Holy Mystery-I See Dead People

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Donna M. Crow

At a writing workshop, I was given this prompt:

Write about someone, living or dead, who you would like to have back in your life.

I know this sounds strange but most of the people from my life who have died, are still in my life. That’s not to say I don’t miss going to lunch with Mom or picking up a telephone to ask Dad a question. I miss singing with Sister Alice Rohe and hearing our voices harmonize. For a while, when someone I love dies, I catch myself reaching for the phone to tell them something funny I know they’d appreciate. It takes a while to adjust the reflexes.  It was a real wakeup call after my parents died to realize there was no-one to whom I should report my whereabouts or trip itinerary. I felt untethered, somehow. No matter how old you are when your parents die there is a sense of having been orphaned. That being said, I am grateful to say that I see and feel the love from most of my loved ones on a regular basis.

I know I’m not alone in this but I don’t personally know any other people besides myself who can say (or will admit) they dream of dead people almost every night. I don’t remember when it started. People I know. People I don’t. People I’ve only met a couple of times before they died. My ancestors. Grandparents who were dead before I was born, aunts and uncles who have since passed. My in-laws. And now that I’ve lost over half of my origin family, they too appear on a regular basis. Mom more than Dad. Both appear more often than my two deceased siblings. But each has their purpose in visiting. Some speak. Some don’t. Sometimes it’s a great reunion with hugs and “I’m so glad to see you again.” Most of the time, they don’t touch me physically and our conversation is telepathic. In these dreams, I am not re-living past experience. I am not ruminating over what is lost. I always know I’m talking to a dead person. They reveal hidden truths in my subconscious that will help me in my waking life. And most of the time I wake up grateful.

Some come with messages for the living. Some come to give me support. Some want help to be released from earth’s hold. Some have been patiently waiting for me to let go of them and they come to say goodbye. They reassure me that I’m on the right track, sit with me through a storm or show me where I need to adjust my thinking. Susie wanted me to help her son. Jim thanked me for friendship and prayers. Bill simply smiled and walked beside me for a minute because we’d talked about what it might be like over there and he wanted to let me know he was okay. My father-in-law was afraid of where he might be headed and asked me to help him stay here. My mother-in-law finally told me what she’d been wanting and waiting to say for years about my marriage to her son, my sister brought me a gift as she said goodbye, my sister-in-law apologized, my friend Sister Alice has continued to be a spirit guide who appears as necessary to shore me up. My brother shows up with a grin, no words, and plays pranks. My mother is a guardian for me, my daughter and grandson. She visits the most. My dad watched for a while, but it felt more like he was waiting until I could go with him, because he was afraid to cross over. Now he only appears occasionally as a nod of approval and support, sometimes with a word of wisdom.

My paternal grandmother whom I never met visited only once, with a vision of how her life had been. A life full of babies, hot stoves and hard work. She was a soured woman, hipping a baby while turning fried chicken in a pan. All my uncles and aunts and cousins swarmed in and out of her kitchen. She handed me the baby and I knew it was me. “Here, this is yours. Nobody’s gonna take care of it but you,” she said. A recurring message from the matriarchal women of my ancestry.

My maternal grandmother has been with me since childhood.

There are so many dead people who are prevalent for me that it is hard to choose who I would like more time with on this earth. However, since she’s been with me the longest, I choose, for this prompt, my maternal grandmother, Mayme Powell Broaddus who died when I was six years old. She was my only living grandparent at the time I was born. Looking back, I believe her absence created the greatest void. I longed for grandparents and because I had none, was drawn to old people. Our elderly neighbor, Mr. Hall who could make something out of nothing, who made his own sundial out of a hole drilled into his patio and filled with silver paint, who recycled window screens and coat hangers into fly swatters. He cut a path through the field from his house to ours so us kids could visit him without getting on the highway. We went to see him every day, took him supper and watched out for him like he was family. The old lady, Annie Masters, who went to my dad’s church, called me granny, taught me how to properly scrape corn off the cob for freezing and once I was a teenager admonished me not to accept secondhand scraps when it came to men. “Get a fresh one, first time around the block,” she said, “not been married, no kids.” I loved being around old people. They had the kind of wisdom I needed, even though I didn’t know it yet and rarely took their advice. My first husband was 14 years older than me and provided me a built-in son. I’m not saying I have regrets. Karmically, I was where I was supposed to be. Practically, Annie saw it coming and told me so.

I’m not sure what kind of grandmother Mayme would have been had I known her my whole life. What I remember of her is limited. Braiding my hair before I went to Vacation Bible School, letting me sleep in the bed with her when I got scared, on the only occasion I remember spending the night. But I know what kind of grandmother she has been to me, even deceased. I went to her in my head and heart when I was disappointed in something my mother had done. I asked her to intercede for me when Mom was mad or hurt. I asked her what made Mom act in certain ways. When Mom avoided or denied her true feelings, I knew Granny would tell me the truth. I dreamed her. I conjured her. I felt her climbing into bed and wrapping her arms around me to comfort me when I felt alone in the world. When I had existential questions about my parents’ fundamental values, it was my internal grandmother who refused to fall victim to strict religious views. She was flexible, understanding, loving. She loved to laugh and to travel and have the kind of fun sometimes unbecoming of an older woman during the time in which she was alive. She never let me down.


I always admired that she kept the engagement ring of her first true love even though he was not the man she married. She wore it whenever she was mad at my grandfather. The idea of it upset my father the way it might have upset my grandfather, as a betrayal to marital commitment, so it lived in Mom’s jewelry box. Male insecurity. I coveted that ring, and eventually talked my mother out of it. To me, it stood for the kind of independence I needed in my life. It stood for confidence, defiance. It stood for not letting a man own you. It stood for love of self, something I could not fully muster in early relationships. My husband at that time, knowing the ring’s history, hinted at the same kind of insecurity whenever I wore the ring. Wondered what kind of statement I was making. The gold band is worn thin and should be replenished so I don’t wear it often now for fear of breaking it, but whenever I need to feel close to my grandmother, I get it out, hold it and sometimes put it on for a day. It is as if the ring holds the power of alchemy, the ability to give me strength. I have a wooden cross necklace on a leather string given to me by my friend Sister Alice Rohe on her deathbed. “You’ve got some big decisions to make,” she said, “and I want to be there with you when you do.”  After she died, I didn’t take the necklace off for 3 years. Now, like my grandmother’s ring, I wear the necklace when I need to feel her guidance in my decision making.

Symbols, like rituals, give us comfort and hold whatever power we give them. I know all true power comes from God. And, I thank God daily for allowing me to experience these comforting dreams and symbols. What a grand Master of design!


Granny loved her flowers and there are pictures of her holding various bouquets from her own yard. Mayme’s Flowers. Mom transplanted many of those perennials to her yard which are now in mine. After Granny died Mom visited her grave with those bouquets every year. I am not so diligent. I believe both Granny and Mom are in my yard tending to my flowers so I don’t have to go to the cemetery to see either of them. They are with me. There is another picture of my grandmother on one of her trips to Florida, after my grandfather passed away. It seemed to me, if pictures tell any part of the truth, that she only began living after he was gone, and her children were grown. In this picture, she is sitting atop a bull, meant as a photo op in some tourist town. She is wearing a (cowboy?) hat and waving a pistol like she might be in a rodeo. To me, this picture says it all. Or at least what I want to believe about the free-spirited soul she longed to be. I know it is only a moment in time and not a true depiction of the whole woman. Are photo albums any more than a chronicle of false memories? We set up photos to seem like we’re having the best life when perhaps the children are mad or crying or the parents are fighting. Yet, for a moment, everyone stops and smiles for the camera, or pretends to be in a rodeo. These are the symbols we create to live by, to pass on to the next generation. A false history. Still, I believe I can see her true spirit in this photo like in the one with the flowers. Her spirit is bright and she is one of the many lights that guide my way through the dark night.

I was born into a fundamental doctrine with lots of rules and fear and I have wrestled with the difference between what I know and feel in my heart and what I was taught through traditional religion. I ask God these questions directly and this week as I went to sleep, I asked again, “Am I on the right road? Will you please help me understand? Give me clarity?” I dreamed my own father—a rare visitor these days—came and told me that all roads lead to the same mountain top and that once I reached the top, I could look over the whole range of mountains and see where all were connected as one. Was that my dad? Or did God/Goddess send me a message through the likeness of the one person who instilled so much fear so I could heal an old wound and deepen my trust and faith? Whatever Holy Mystery this is, I’ll take it.   

Blackberries, 2007

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Mom made all our birthdays feel special and never failed to create a celebration for each and every one. These days I don’t find birthdays especially exciting. But nature still finds a way by gifting me the ripening of blackberries. In counting down the days to fresh cobbler I offer this essay from 2007. Although the children referenced in this piece are older, I am not. LOL But, I am a grandmother now so it’s time to pass a few traditions to the next generation.

Donna M. Crow

The nurse remembered Mama, the one with purple fingers, who had her babies in July.  Those purple, briar pricked fingers, the first to touch my face, must have left their mark.  But, not so anybody would notice, not for a while anyway.  It’s like the disappearing ink in the cereal box that only re-appears in certain light, and it’s taken years. 

We followed Mama out to the field, buckets in hand to pick enough for canning, making jams and cobblers.  I complained about the heat, the briars, the possibility of snakes.  Funny how all those dangers disappeared when playing spies, hiding in weeds or climbing trees.  I was a poor hand to do any real help for Mama, but I was there.  I was convinced blowing real hard would remove the chiggers.  My belly filled faster than my pail, but Mama never complained.  If we helped even a little, we got credit for it.  She bragged on us when Daddy came home from work and sometimes, I believed her myself. 

Most times though, Mama donned the early morning path without us, dew heavy on knee high boots, finger holes cut out of gloves, and did more work before we woke up than we ever thought about doing.  By the time we woke, the berries were washed and prepared for the next step, and breakfast was ready.  I preferred the berries sprinkled with sugar to any cobbler or pie.  So, she always saved a bowl out for us to eat while she was preserving the rest for a winter’s feast.     

On cold mornings, under heavy quilt, when I was reluctant to get out of bed, Mama spread the taste of summer on fresh homemade bread, near a crackling fire place.  Nothing tastes sweeter as your backside warms against a morning fire.  I became a human rotisserie, taking such luxury for granted.  It’s taken years to appreciate the little things.  But what I wouldn’t give on a cold winter’s day for a fire someone else started and homemade bread and jam someone else made.  Come December, forget the presents, it’s Mama’s blackberry jam cake that tells me Christmas is here.   

Each year now, near my birthday, I watch the berry patches waiting for the first black to appear.  When it does, I stop on the trail for the taste that tells me summer has truly arrived.  And, the marks of my birthright begin to show, one fingertip at a time as I make plans for the harvest.

Though my teenage daughter has only a slight interest in the berry patch, for now, I can see purple stains splotching her memories.  I recognize it in her eyes once the chiggers have been washed off and she’s sitting in front of a fresh bowl straight from the patch.  I see it in the winter, when we are weary of the cold and summer is as close as thawing out a bag of wild mountain blackberries.  She is proud of making her own pie. This year, we tried dumplings for the first time.  She loved them. 

But, it’s my married son, who has fully reached the age of appreciation and is often my partner in picking.  He is becoming known as a great cobbler maker in his own right, maybe better than me.  We don’t settle for only those patches conveniently located.  We have gone deeper and higher and found the fattest, juiciest berries, our location top secret.  Once the season starts, we check our calendars for every opportunity to hit the woods.    

I feel close to God out there, in the thicket, milk jug cut open in the front, handle attached to my belt, leaving both hands free to gather what is given, using nature the way it was intended.  I know summer is fleeting and blackberry season lasts only about two weeks.  It’s like a fever with me, not wanting to miss a single berry.

I have become a berry picking machine.  I never eat while I pick.  Sometimes I feel greedy, though, leaving few behind for the birds and snakes.  I do little picking at the edge of the path, where the berries have blackened too soon in the sun’s harsh rays.  The edge dwellers, rushing to their demise are sometimes knotty, tougher to pluck and bitter to the taste.  It’s the ones farther in that catch my eye, make me forget about snakes as I wade deep into the thicket.  Only when I become completely entwined in briars stuck on all sides, one with the vine, do I find what I’m looking for.  They are a lesson in patience, having rested beneath the shade of a Tulip Poplar leaf, breathing in the cooler mountain air.  The sun’s warm rays dancing through the leaves in perfect proportion to the moisture sipped through root straws, a sweet vacation.  They are the ones, bigger than my thumb, that fills a gallon jug in ten minutes.  They make me reach farther, take chances with footing and fall into holes.  They are my berries, put there for me.          

I’ve heard it said, “You’ll know who you are, when you know where you’re from.”  I believe I am from the blackberry patch, marked at birth, by Mama’s purple fingers. 

Aliens

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Beneath the large Black Gum Tree in our front yard, the one whose roots made occasional appearances in the dirt of our Hot Wheels racetracks, my brother David twisted a tire swing around and around until my feet were high off the ground. While he twisted, he whispered to me that the two of us may not belong in this family. He came up with this theory that our real parents had been abducted by aliens because we seemed so different from everyone else in our household. I was inclined to believe him. If it had been my story, told today, I may lean toward he and I being the aliens dropped into this unsuspecting family, because we were two of a kind in a foreign land. 

We’d never been told that Mom had been married before, prior to meeting our father. Dad had been helping her raise the two black haired/brown eyed children, whose own father was M.I.A., a few years before David and I came along with our fair-haired English/Irish complexions. By the time I was born, our oldest sister Barbara was almost 12, brother Butch had just turned ten. David had only been scoping out the planet a short while and already had made a few discoveries he couldn’t wait to share, like different rules for different children or how some kids have extra sets of grandparents which translated to extra Christmas presents. I arrived two days after his third birthday and I like to believe he considered me a gift.

Dad held him up in the nursery window where I and some of my future classmates were displayed and asked him which baby he wanted. Born a few weeks late and weighing in at 10 pounds and 21 inches, I was born tall and old. David was in bad need of a compadre and I looked like I was off to a good running start. Even the doctor claimed he’d delivered a three-month old child!

“That big one,” David pointed. Out of a half dozen babies, he picked me!

“Okay, son,” Dad said. “I’ll have them wrap her up, so we can take her home.” For years, David believed it. He liked to remind me that he was the one who sprung me from the hospital and that he could also send me back. (I have since checked the roster for kids who would have been in that window at the same time, and I can say Thank You Brother D for not sending me home with any of their families. Shoo-Weee! Even if ours were abducted by aliens!) For his part, he was happy to have me deflect Barbara’s attention away from dressing him up like a girl.

Barbara was the age most girls are when they begin to pay attention to real babies, too old for dolls, too young for her own children. With two brothers she was primed and ready for another girl. In some ways it seemed I half-belonged to her. Whenever Mom had asked her help with David, she had used him as her dress up doll, putting him in a dress and painting round red circles on his cheeks, a bow in his hair. I was real, better than make believe, however short lived it was. She was over babies and children by the time our youngest addition, Angela, was born four years after me.

With Angela’s arrival we were a family of seven in a five-room house. We tripped over each other and shared every material thing. Besides clothing, sometimes even our thoughts were handed down. When it came to sleeping arrangements, we were divvied up along gender lines in small alcoves on opposite sides of the living room. Until I was six years old, I slept with our half-sister Barbara, while David was sequestered on the other side of the house in some arrangement which included a half-bed, a couch, and our half-brother, Butch. Angela, the baby, slept in a crib next to our parents in the only room with closing doors. 

The house was a 4-square. Every room had two doorways so that you could leave one room and enter another, then another and another until you returned to where you were originally. As children, we used this unending circle within the square to chase each other. On one corner of the square, a bathroom had been added where none existed before. On the opposite corner, a porch had been closed in for extra bed space.  

It was no secret Barbara wasn’t fond of children. Most of the time, David and I had the impression we were merely “tolerated” by both our older siblings. Barbara detested having any of our friends or younger cousins around. She complained and usually left the house before they arrived. Her bonding as a mother figure was strictly limited to me, and viable only at night when everyone else was asleep. She rarely had anything to do with me during the day and nothing for Angela.

Butch was a prankster. He liked to pick on his sisters, play ball, laugh and hang out with friends. Oh, and listen to oldies music on a stereo we were forbidden to touch. He was gone a lot. I snuck in his room (the boxed in porch area) and snooped and touched all the things while he was away so what I knew about him came from my observations more than actual interactions, until I was older. 

Although I shared a bed with Barbara, you could hardly call ours a bedroom. It was more like a glorified hallway on the way to the only bathroom in the house so that everyone had to walk right past our bed day or night. This invasion into her privacy, irritated the teenager who seemed to me had already grown up. Any privacy I would find in that household came from hiding behind a toy barrel in a very small shared closet, pretending it was my own room. I hid there for hours until someone realized I was missing and came looking for me. My late-night bonding with Barbara included her angelic voice singing my favorite songs and lightly running her fingers up and down my arms to relax me into slumber, a technique learned from our mother. She sometimes shared secrets with me which made me feel special. Sleeping in the bed with Barbara created a symbiotic emotional bond which tethered us until her death in 2013.

From the beginning, I knew too much for my own good without the words to understand anything at all. I know now I was soaking in the energy from those I loved. As an empath, I was sensitive and thoughtful and easily worried. David lightened my load by being responsibly caring and funny as hell. I could pretty much count on him to say what was on his mind. My vivid imagination happened only while I was asleep. During the day, I carried the burdens of my well-meaning and good parents’ unspoken and emphatically denied emotions and because they denied the truth, I came to believe I could not trust my own intuition–or my dreams (which I now know were trying to clue me in.) I became a lifelong seeker of truth without always believing it when I saw it. This was exhausting work and tamped down any creative or imaginative endeavors.

At the time of David’s tire twisting alien explanation, the one and only living grandparent that we all shared had recently died, leaving Mom in grief. Barbara had moved to college which in itself was an adjustment in sleeping arrangements if nothing else. Especially for me, losing my night-time security blanket. Further, Barbara had become a girl gone wild, lending to Mom’s despair and our parents were beside themselves with what to do about her. Mom cried all the time. It was 1968. Barbara was diving headlong into the hippy scene, free love, drinking, pot smoking, and mixed-race dating which led to a mixed-race marriage, which led to dropping out of college, which led to racial discussions, all topics that were not allowed in our household. Barbara was blazing a trail on which we would all be singed.

Butch, for me, was the stereotypical older brother who picked at me and chased me into the bathroom with his friend’s boa constrictor wrapped around his neck. But he was Barbara’s younger brother—Irish twins—only eighteen months between them yet they had never been close. Unlike the easy camaraderie between David and me, they were separate satellites orbiting our familial habitat, with occasional thunderous clashes. During our alien invasion period, words were spoken between them that would never be taken back. Yet, none of this was spoken out loud where children were supposed to hear it. What we overheard by accident must be surmised on our own and through our own lens, then added to the palpable tension in the room. Of course these people were abducted by aliens!

Mom was trying to wean me to sleep alone but I was having none of it. I was prone to nightmares and when I woke, I yelled for what seemed like hours for Mom to come to my bedside. In reality it might have taken a whole 3-5 minutes for her to make her soothing appearance and shush me from waking the whole house. She had to cover my windows with sheets and load my bed with stuffed animals for protection. I had also taken to sleep-walking, and went straight for the door, apparently trying to escape while the rest of the house slept. If I coaxed Mom to lie down beside me, I held her tight so I’d know if she tried to move. Poor Mom. With a two year old in tow, I doubt she ever got much sleep. Soon, she placed the backs of chairs against my bed so she would hear if I got out of bed. Instead of lying beside me when I called, she sat in one of the chairs so she wouldn’t get pinned down, still tracing her fingers across my back and arms until I drifted off.  A couple of times, David was dispatched to sleep in my room, probably to give Mom a break and before long my little sister Angela became my roommate and protege, thus shifting my role from little sister lost to big sister mentor. Angela was born into changing times. She and I shared quarters for the rest of our years in that house together but unfortunately, I would never be as good to her as David was to me.  

Those early nights with David made for good black op planning sessions. We utilized our best spy techniques, learned from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and pledged to watch, listen, learn and report back any alien activity. David was a keen observer and where I took everything to heart, he saw absurdity and was able to turn any situation into a great story or cartoon drawing, getting to the heart of the matter in a much healthier way than my rumination. We made a good team. I was his greatest fan and best (aka captive) audience. He made the jokes and I laughed.

I was the Robin to his Batman, the Tonto to his Lone Ranger. We were shoulder companions, forging through our world like superheroes with towels pinned to our shoulders, searching for clues. We fought invisible foes, pretending to be tied down on a conveyor belt, inching toward the doom of a sawblade. We’d borrowed this scenario from a real episode of Batman and Robin. To save ourselves, we used what we had on us, shoes. We took turns throwing a shoe toward the pre-designated shut off lever that would stop the saw and the conveyor belt. Our mark was one particular knob on a dresser drawer. If we missed the mark, we inched further toward the saw!

We founded a neighborhood club called The Eagle Eye Investigators. When the neighbors got involved, we sometimes chose sides, boys against girls and became each other’s temporary enemies but if things got too rough, I knew David always had my back. By the end it was always us against them. As big brothers go, he was the best, always including me in the fun and never outgrowing my presence or trying to get away from me when his friends were around. Except for when the aliens landed, we had an idealic childhood.

Somewhere along the line, I changed the narrative of the alien invasion to my being adopted. I felt things that I could never explain or put into words and had nobody to tell if I did. Sometimes I thought I must be crazy. Like a good investigator, I gathered my clues. They are as follows:

  1. I was in the kitchen looking through the junk drawer and found a box of wooden matches and a candle. I loved the rough scratchy vibration of striking a match and the blue/yellow flame that followed with the sound of gasping breath. I lit the candle. Then, I took other matches and held them to the flame to watch the spontaneous burst. Mom came in and frantically took them away from me saying, “My children never play with matches!” Emphasis on MY!  ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘I must not be your child because clearly, I’m playing with matches.’
  2. I questioned everything. I needed to know the why of things. Against the unspoken family rules, I wanted to know why Barbara and Butch had different last names. I wanted to know why there were different rules for different children. Why Barbara’s black husband wasn’t allowed to come to our house and why couldn’t we go visit them? I must have struck a nerve. Mom said, “You say things to me none of my other children would ever say,” then she cried, which was all it took to make me feel ashamed for ever having spoken my thoughts. I internalized a gasp of separation between us and it was all the proof I needed that I must not belong here!

With all my questioning, I did get some answers, stories about Mom’s earlier life that nobody else got. Even after we were grown David did not know the name of Mom’s other husband. I learned what a step-father was and heard words like alcoholic, abuse. While I was gathering fodder for future memoirs, David was busy making up stories of his own.

I eventually found proof enough of my birth to this family in the form of a baby spoon with my name etched on it. It was wrapped in a letter from IBM where Dad worked, congratulating him on the baby girl. I had been snooping through a portable file box left unlocked in the bottom of Dad’s closet. There I was, Donna Marie, though the baby spoon didn’t look like it had ever been used…hmmm. Even if David did pick the wrong baby, I decided to be glad he chose me and that we were in this adventure together.

About a year before both our parents died, Dad found a newspaper clipping with the names of all the babies born in the local hospital during my birth week listed with who their parents were. He gave it to me, “If you’re still looking for proof,” he said.

These days all I need for proof who my parents were is to look in the mirror.

Welcome to Old SOUL Medicine Crow by Donna M. Crow

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This, I believe: Writing is a life saver, a game changer and a creative endeavor. I use it to understand myself, the world around me and the universe which holds us all in her vision. I believe all things are connected. Just as each strand of a spider’s web effects the whole structure, so too each individual’s behavior matters. Words matter. Even thought matters.

Ours is a journey toward CENTER.

Located at each of the junctures or turning points on this big web of life is an opportunity for growth and an opening toward enlightenment. Free Will allows us to choose to “step up” to our higher selves or to remain stuck in repeating patterns or even to make a turn toward darkness. These “decision points” can be subtle but will definitely effect our life’s experiences and outcome. Without being mindfully aware of our choices, we can create damage and destruction for ourselves and others.

Sometimes, making the right choice looks like the hardest one, where we have to face an underlying fear. The good news is that at each of these junctures are light workers. Teachers, Mentors, Guides, Guardians, Angels, Seers or Healers who are assigned by GOD to be available to help but it is our choice to ask. Sometimes the way forward comes through the unknowing words of a friend or even a stranger. Words that were meant for our ears at a particular time, delivered by God’s messenger. It is my prayer that more people choose to follow the light, to do no harm, to protect and respect Mother Earth who has given her all for us and to keep following that path to the greater good. When we spend more time working on ourselves, we have no time to point fingers at others.

Writing is a powerful mode of transportation to self awareness which leads directly to a closer relationship with Creator God.

Hindman: A Healing Place, 2005

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Donna M. Crow

In honor of the upcoming session of the Hindman Settlement School’s Appalachian Writer’s Workshop, I am revisiting an old, old journal entry written by my past self. That self was just embarking on a great new journey, walking through a door to her “second” adulthood. At the time of this writing, I was still unaware of all the plot twists and turns to come. If you read my introduction about there being “lights” positioned at the junctures of your life to show you the way forward, the Appalachian Writer’s Workshop was/ is a beacon and the people that are drawn to it are changed forever.

            Though I’ve never been here before, I am known to this place.  Familiarity brings memories that welcome me like a lost child come home. Spirits, past and present brush past me in their dancing circles and my head swims in pure delight.  Their energy refreshes my own tired spirit and renews what I have lost, giving back that part of me, pushed away long ago. My ordinary words, inged with pronunciation, shamed out of me in school, find their home here in spectacular places of the heart, held solemnly in the souls of family whose bloodlines are the seams of coal connecting their lives to mine, comedy and tragedy. I am home. 

            Writers convene at the Hindman Settlement School Appalachian Writer’s Workshop every year for a full week of fellowship, lectures, workshopping their own writing and so much more. For the first time, I have joined them.  Not knowing what to expect, I come prepared for anything, except what I find.  Myself.

I cross the footbridge over Troublesome Creek and notice my reflection in the water, a girl of twelve, barefoot, squishing sand between her toes as water trickles around her ankles, tickled by minnows.  She wants to know where I’ve been, why I left her behind.  She is hurt, but she will forgive me.

A carved wood bench placed on the hill, a worthy pew in this mighty church.  I sit with eyes closed, and hear my dad’s voice leading a song from the Old Baptist Hymnal for all to follow.  The harmonies fall into place and fill the air around me, each voice a song of its own, in shaped notes of poetry, memoir or fiction.

I recognize old souls in new faces and together we study the walls that separate us from the other side, sharing footholds.

The dinner bell rings.  Old and new, gather around the table to break bread, a communion of work and play, libation for the soul, a workshop, a reunion, a healing place.

Rollin’, 2008

Old Soul Medicine Crow2 Comments

(This essay was written in 2008 under the title, “Balls”. At the time, my life was taking a major turn. I was still married, although barely.)

Thanks to the Kentucky River Sweep, an initiative where volunteers in a parade of boats clean the river, our water and its banks contain less trash than they have in years.  My (now ex-) husband and I both grew up on the Kentucky River; him, a water dog and me, a bank dweller.  My parents’ farm borders the river and though they tried their best to keep me out of it, I spent hours on the bank fishing and watching boats go by. His parents owned boat after boat, even living on one for a while. Between the two of us, we have seen almost everything floating in that pool from bleach bottles to cow carcasses and shot most of it with our Daisy Red Ryders. Until a concerted effort was made to clean the unnatural floating debris left by careless polluters, one particular phenomenon escaped us both. That is, the great number of balls that end up there; basketballs, soccer balls, volley balls, kickballs. Easily a natural migration of gravity, or is it something more.  

            On a recent trip between locks and dams, a twenty-mile journey in our 1969 Lonestar Runabout, we spotted at least six different balls. There were virtually no other foreign objects.  So, we figured, with people being more careful, the balls must be getting there on their own. If it is round and filled with air, it eventually makes its way to the river. We were surprised we’d never noticed before. I also wonder if maybe this is new, a result of our throw away mentality.  When I was a kid, a ball, even deflated, held promise of future play. We never threw anything away, using it far beyond its natural life and then holding on to it just in case. What does it say about us today that we allow our kids to so easily discard these loyal playmates, leaving them to fend for themselves.

I love the river. This natural waterway snakes a path in and out of hollows and past people’s homes, gathering knowledge and strength from its mountain origins, never making excuses for humble beginnings. Every drop of water as important as the next, it eventually spills its wisdom into the great fountain that is its destiny. Along the way, it watches the life and death of farms and children as well as corn, cows and marijuana. Towns and Cities gather at its banks as the gentle lapping of water whispers the secrets of its people. Trees line the narrow banks of the Kentucky like arms welcoming a child come home and together with the sun provide a strobe-like prism across our faces transporting us from our daily worries. And, this little piece of heaven is as close as our next breath or our next drink of water. No wonder the balls want to go there. They are drawn, like us, to a better place. Who could blame them?

I thought about the lives these balls had witnessed and the children they had entertained.  Perhaps, even while being loved, they were taken for granted or sometimes abused. No matter how good the intention, a Chuck Taylor to the gut is never easy to take. I have to say, as a mother in the hollows of an empty nest, I know how they feel. Like a helium balloon cut loose after the party, they are no longer needed. They have entered a new phase of their existence. The purpose they served for so many years now finished, they must re-define themselves, find meaning in their last days. I have seen them, left in the yard, un-noticed, deflated, until one day, I imagine they hear the call of a faint song on a distant breeze, “Brothers and Sisters, come on down, come to the river to pray.”  A spa for old balls to soak, carefree on endless days. With no pressure to hold breath against hard concrete or bony fists, the tired, half inflated sphere allows the warmth of the sun to expand its possibilities, breathe in new life.  It waits for the earth to move, a wind or maybe a flood to begin this journey of patience and gravity.  Like aging, only a slow-motion camera could recognize their gradual yet deliberate migration southward.The lesson is not lost on me. We all need patience and perseverance to get where we’re going.

Driving across the river on a one lane bridge, following the railroad track up Miller’s Creek Road, I saw two more balls well on their way. One, a basketball, had made it all the way to the road but landed in the ditch. I wondered how long it would take before a rain would come heavy enough to get it out of that predicament. I pictured an over-loaded logging truck unable to brake on a wet road just as the ball started across. I almost stopped like I do when I see a turtle in the road. I thought tossing the ball over the hill would take months off its journey and ensure a safe passage, but then I saw a kickball down by the railroad tracks waiting for the next coal train to rattle the ground and I realized the path is never safe. There are dangers everywhere. With only six balls in a twenty-mile span, it is clear only the strongest survive. It’s the natural order of things and just because I noticed it, doesn’t mean I can change the outcome. Maybe, no matter how much help they receive, the ultimate responsibility is theirs to stay focused on the goal and take their chances with fate.  It takes guts…or balls to keep rolling along knowing they may not make it. Maybe even inanimate objects know it’s the journey that matters most. Maybe the obstacles they overcome make the destination even greater and the memories, stories they can tell the next generation. Maybe this story has little to do with abandoned soccer balls.

With the passing of my father-in-law, I helped sort through his life’s remains. The things left behind do tell stories, some are hard to listen to while others bring a chuckle. Packrats that we are, children of parents who lived through the first depression, parents of children who are about to experience one for the first time, the need to scrimp and save may come back into vogue. We tried to find a home for any good item we didn’t want, but even with conscious minds, there are some things that never should’ve been saved in the first place.  When the garbage men came to pick up some thirty-odd contractor bags full of trash there was still a basketball on the shelf in the garage, older than our grown children, breathless and bounce-less. I couldn’t throw it away. One of the men said, “What you gonna do with that basketball?”

“It’s yours if you want it,” I said, happy to find a willful home.

“I collect old balls. Pick’em up every chance I get. Sometimes we see them in the ditch,” the garbage man said. “I always stop.” 

 “What do you do with them?” I felt hopeful for one last ditch effort to give these balls another chance.

“We have an awful problem with dogs chasing the truck, but those balls take care of it,” he said.

“What do you mean? You throw it at them?”

“Naw, I’ll show you,” he said as he continued to load our discards. I hadn’t noticed when he’d wedged the basketball between the tandem tires on the back right side and hollered at his driver to pull up. “Hold your ears,” he said. It blew like a stick of dynamite. He straightened his back proud and waited for our praise of his genius. “Stops dogs in their tracks.”

 Clearly, I’ve given this way too much thought but I caught myself feeling sorry for the ball. It hadn’t played for years, but now it would never even make it to the river. Then, I remembered something my son told me while we were visiting his grandmother in the nursing home.

            “You don’t ever have to worry about going to a place like this.  I’m not gonna let it happen,” he said.

            “Are you going to take care of me?” I asked, surprised at his concern.

            “Naw,” he said. When it gets to that point, I’ll just shoot you in the head.” 

“Thanks son, that makes me feel so much better.”

All kidding aside, I know from experience there are a lot worse things than death. So, I’ll continue to notice the balls in odd places and wish them well and think about them as I wander along and hope that wherever my journey ends, the stories of how I got there will be good and the view as beautiful as an autumn day on the Kentucky River.