Tag: memories

Alchemy

Old Soul Medicine Crow4 Comments

Alchemy: a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way.

I went to dinner in Lexington with some women. Friends, and friends of friends. Three of them had birthdays in the same month so not only was there reason to celebrate, after dinner we were attending a reading by another friend who was celebrating the release of her latest book. A night out for the ladies.

Since we had gathered primarily for the literary arts, the dinner conversation began with literature. Who recently read what, which books are must reads, what we’re currently writing, and morphed into general story telling since most of us were writers of one form or another. One person’s story reminds someone else of a similar story, reminds another, and so it goes. In this instance, we traveled the world going from Chicago to Milan to New York and all the way back to Kentucky, where we all currently live. One theme that emerged was housing. From tiny squeeze-ins to expansive high-rise sublets to starter homes, the ladies spoke of lucky breaks, exigent circumstances and turning bad situations into good. I saw a theme emerging.

“Alchemy,” I said.

“What’s alchemy?” my friend asked. I explained poorly that it was a term referring to the medieval attempt to turn base metals into gold. But that today it also meant just what she had been saying, how she’d turned a bad situation into a good one.”

Then, “Martha’s” Kentucky story of purchasing a farmhouse without prior knowledge of the den of snakes who had taken up residence beneath the front stoop drew gasps from everyone.

            “I’d have to back out of the sale,” one said.

            “Or put it right back on the market,” another chimed in. “You didn’t stay there, did you? Is that where you live now?”

The fear of snakes always sparks eeks and cringes followed by other close encounter stories. I’d venture to guess we all have snake stories. These ladies all did. The fear of the serpent is likely the most common phobia. We love to hate these creatures.  

I, too, am no fan and prefer not to get personal with a snake.  I thought about reminding us all that snake symbolism was originally that of the divine feminine and that maybe we had been conditioned to fear snakes based on the patriarchal need to control the innate power of women. According to Ted Andrews’ book Animal Speak, seeing a snake denotes resurrection, renewal, rebirth (shedding of one’s skin to become anew). In dreams, simply encountering the snake is thought to be the subconscious awareness of a pending new cycle of life. Being overly afraid of the snake symbolizes fear of the changes necessary for internal growth. Getting bit might symbolize the level of resistance or blocks you’re throwing into your own path. I’ve had plenty of these dreams throughout my spiritual awakening journey as well as in person sightings. An explanation like this might be interesting, but it rarely does much to allay a well-honed fear of snakes. Thinking of the power of transformation, I juxtaposed one of my own snake stories instead.  

I am the third generation of my family to inhabit the family farm, in a house that was built in 1901. Dad refurbished the house, mid-seventies. Insulation, Drywall, paneling, popcorn painted ceilings and area rugs turned the place around, even before electricity or plumbing was added. Instead, fireplaces, a Warm Morning stove, outdoor toilet and a rain barrel became our every summer adventure, heading back to a small abode with a thermostat and a real bathtub during the school year. We merrily frolicked at the river’s edge, raised cattle, pigs and chickens, the occasional mule, helped Dad with tobacco, hay, planting and harvesting vegetables, hunted arrowheads, shot BBguns, picked blackberries and maintained a healthy awareness of snakes like we lived in the 19th century. In his head, my father sort of did. I was having the time of my life. Today, I am grateful for this character-building years-long sojourn into the past. My parents installed plumbing and a few other upgrades and moved into the farmhouse after all of us children were grown, around 1991. 

In 2012, due to Mom’s cancer and other circumstances, my father bought a house closer to town and nearer to doctors and the hospital. The farm is isolated with sometimes inaccessible country roads. Since I was freshly divorced, he convinced me to take up residency on the farm so that the empty house would not get vandalized or become a drug den.

In the seventies, Dad didn’t believe in the future of electricity or otherwise could not envision the number of useless appliances the next generation would find not only convenient but necessary. He felt ahead of his time including two whole outlets per room. Re-learning how to live in an old house whose electricity has not been modernized to meet today’s standards and whose prior inhabitants had learned how to “make things work” without actually having them repaired, included several “combinations” of actions I needed to learn to keep the house running smoothly. Namely, deciphering the tangled web of which outlets in how many rooms, both upstairs and down, whose wiring led to the same 15-amp fuse. I should have bought stock in Buse fuses for the number of boxes I purchased and went through in those early months, grateful they still existed.

Another thing he made sure to tell me was about the relationship he had formed with a huge black rat snake that lived in the shed out back. As I’ve indicated, snakes aren’t even my favorite subject, but out of reverence to my father, I listened to his tutorial.

            “You know I store feed in that building, for the cattle. Mice get in it and make a big mess. That big snake keeps the mice and rat population down so I like him being in there. He’s not poisonous and he never bothers me. When I go into the shed to retrieve the lawn mower I talk to him, warn him I’m coming in. He may be hanging from a rafter or laying on the ground someplace. I pull the riding mower out and start it up. When he hears the engine, he comes out and makes his way down toward the pond. I guess he’s getting a drink. I don’t see him again until after I’ve finished cutting grass. Later in the evening, when it’s quiet, I can sometimes see him returning to the building. We’ve been doing this for years. We made a deal.”

            “Okay,” I tell him, “I can live with that.” Even though secretly I thought, okay then, I’m not going in that shed, which turned out to be impossible. So, I did indeed follow in my father’s footsteps and tried my hand at snake whispering, which might or might not sound more like clanging and banging and yelling warnings rather than actual whispers. I named the snake, Earl.

Dad cut more grass than the immediate area around the house. He had cleared and tamed almost an acre of land, to keep the snakes at bay, he’d said, even though he made exception for Earl. He thought it wise to claim territory separate from the wilder fields and fence rows that bordered the woodland’s edge to provide a clear view of encroaching wildlife. He advised me to do the same. But since he took his riding mower with him to the new house and I still only had a push mower, I hired a neighbor to keep my lawn tidy. I told him the snake story and asked if he could please respect my father’s wishes and look out for Earl. “It’s been there for years,” I tell him. “It doesn’t want to harm anyone.”

Vernon was on the lookout for Earl, no doubt. His first encounter with Dad’s rat snake shocked them both. He entered the shed looking for a weed eater. The lanky sentry hung from a rafter at eye level as he entered, probably wondering who the hell this guy thinks he is entering Herbert Crow’s field mouse buffet. After that, unbeknownst to me, Vernon began strapping on a sidearm before arriving to mow the grass.

After a month or two of cutting the grass with no further incidents I thought all was well. However, one day, Vernon gave in to his own fears and ignored my sentiment about the friendly cohabitant of my abode. He knocked on my door, and using a hoe to extend his reach and not actually touch the old guy, held out his conquered prey to me the way my dogs string out a dead rabbit on my doorstep…as a gift.

            “That’s Earl,” I say, confused.

            “Don’t worry, I got him,” Vernon said. “I hate me a snake. That’s why I carry this.” He proudly pointed to his waist band where he’d holstered the offending weapon. The story he told was just as my father had described, the snake heard the mower and came out of the building to head down to the pond, minding his own business. Only Vernon didn’t care where he was going. Seeing the snake, he chased it down with his lawn tractor, close enough to get a good shot with his pistol because he sure as hell wasn’t going to get off that mower and possibly get bit. He also wasn’t going to let it out of his sight for fear of where it might go…and…he didn’t want to miss. Poor Earl had made it all the way to the fence row, about to cross the threshold to safety before he felt the blow. Vernon was proud.

My father had warned me about the snake we’d named Earl. But we both failed to warn Earl about the viper named Vernon.

            “Oh, that’s so sad,” said the lady who would have instantly sold Martha’s den-of-snakes’ house.

“I can’t believe he did that!” said another. “Did you let him keep mowing your lawn after that?”

“Do you hear how you have all changed your attitudes from loathing to compassion and concern for a snake?” I ask, “Now, that’s alchemy.”         

Recycling

Old Soul Medicine Crow2 Comments

I wrote this essay many years ago to have a laugh with and about my father. He liked this essay and bragged to his friends that I used him as a muse for my stories. One of his greatest attributes was being able to laugh at himself and tell his own embarrassing stories.

            When Dad had by-pass surgery, Mom’s company was all he wanted. He was like a child, scared to let Mom out of his sight. Having his tender heart manhandled did a real number on his psyche. The rest of us became pegs looking for a hole to fill. How to help him became how to help Mom while she was sitting beside Dad. On one of my visits, I chose to tackle the kitchen.

            I started by washing the dishes which included more cottage cheese containers and peanut butter jars than I care to remember. My parents could never stand to throw away perfectly good containers, with lids! Throughout my childhood, the dreaded empties lined up on the kitchen counter soaking in soapy water. I always hoped they got washed out before it was my turn at the dishes.

I was sure Mom had a real set of dishes, I’d seen them on birthdays and holidays, but they were hidden behind a multitude of Happy Meal cups, margarine tubs and other designs of reusable ingenuity picked up at the local grocery store or fast-food chain. The rest of the country may live in a throw-away society, but not my folks. They don’t throw anything away. With their grandchildren grown, I felt fairly certain Mom and Dad should be able to use the good stuff without breaking it so I took a few liberties with the cleanout. I imagined how happy Mom would be to find I’d made so much new space in her cabinets. Then, I opened the silverware drawer. I expected to see the complete set of table ware that we’d once collected from inside detergent boxes at A & P. I didn’t know I would have to hunt for it beneath the best KFC and Long John Silvers had to offer, separated by color and stuffed into reused plastic bread sacks wedged between the silverware tray and the side of the drawer, which barely closed.

             Being a preacher’s wife meant mom did not have to cook on Sundays. But that didn’t mean she had the day off. After church we visited shut-ins, sick and old, in their homes, in hospitals and nursing homes until supper. ALL of us. Sometimes, if Dad was lucky, a member of his congregation would invite us for a meal after church (saving him money), but, if we were lucky, they wouldn’t. Yes, the home cooked meals were fantastic, but fast food was a rare and festive occasion for us then and Long John Silver’s did not expect the “children to be seen and not heard”.

            Dad never failed to remind us to save our plastic forks, “You never know when you’ll want to go on a picnic.”  His words still resonate. We never questioned it. We lived in a perpetual state of hope for this thing we saw on television which included a red and white plaid table cloth laid out in the middle of some central park like place and a grand basket filled with fried chicken and deviled eggs, our friends frolicking in the background. There may even be a lake involved. The closest we got to a picnic was riding a wagon behind Dad’s tractor down to the riverbank on our farm to watch skiers skim the water on weekends. Mom probably packed sandwiches. Not a bad adventure but we didn’t need plastic forks for that. I wonder if plastic dinnerware is considered a collectible antique after twenty years, like cars? I could be rich!

            Dad was born in 1928, one of thirteen children.

            Recycling wasn’t even a word back then, it was survival. Dad’s skills in saving had been honed to perfection and carried out in our own family. I’m not knocking his frugality; it was a good lesson for me to learn. I still live within my means and re-use everything possible. It’s just that he and Mom kept everything, well past it’s time.

We enjoyed the treasure hunt of yard sales but no treasures were ever found at one of our own. Once my parents were finished with an item, there was no use left in it. Mom wondered why she couldn’t make any money at yard sales like other people did.

            This fork collection though! Mom had gone to the grocery, most likely because she needed out of the house for a breath while I was there with Dad. I felt sure she wouldn’t mind so I started pulling the massive collection from every nook and cranny in several kitchen drawers. Unfortunately, Dad’s reclining chair was positioned with a view to the corner of the kitchen where I began.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he yelled.

“I’m just cleaning up a bit, Dad.”

“You’re not throwing those away, are you?” I recognized his high-pitched agitation voice from my childhood. I turned to look at him.  

“I’m thinking about it, Dad. We’re all grown now, why would you need dozens and dozens of plasticware you never use?” I asked.

“You never know…” he began.

“When you’ll want to go on a picnic?” I completed his sentence. He knew he was being called out and I knew I’d overstepped my bounds. Here came that high pitched voice again.

“I have no intention for you to come in here while I’m down and go changing everything around. Does your mother know what you’re up to?”

I knew I was treading on fragile ground, here. I didn’t want to cause him more stress.  “Dad, how about this?” I said, “I’ll box them up and label them and you can keep them in storage. But let’s at least clean out these kitchen drawers, can we? I’ll bet Mom would appreciate that. He agreed, albeit reluctantly. I found a shoe box (of course I found a shoe box, they never got thrown away either) and started stuffing all the white forks and knives and spoons into it, realizing I was going to need a second box for the black set.

            A couple of months passed with no mention of the ‘cleaning incident’.  It was late August and time for our family reunion, which Dad always organized. With his recent open heart surgery, they were going to need some help. Mom phoned to ask what I would bring and let it slip that Dad had volunteered to supply utensils. We both laughed. I should have been glad he’d decided to finally use the things. Or, re-use them as the case may be. I know in my head that plastic can be washed, but somehow the idea of these used plastic forks just bothered me. Who knows, the person I might be eating after could be me—some twenty-five years earlier. It just didn’t seem right.

            Dad, one of thirteen children, gifted me with forty-eight first cousins. Reunion Day arrived and so did our relatives, like a gaggle of geese migrating south. Some in fancy cars as if to say we too should have followed them north for better jobs and better lives. I had no intention of telling them about the forks. I actually thought it was a little bit funny. I came, of course, equipped with my own.

            Standing in line for food I noticed my cousin Bobby, a local, with a stainless-steel fork sticking out of his back pocket. His mother and my Dad were siblings. I slid in the food line behind him. “I see that,” I whispered, tapping on the fork. 

            He pulled me aside as if we were about to become traitors to our country.  “Listen,” he said, “my mom saves her used plastic forks and brings them to these reunions. I’d be careful if I were you, which one you choose.”

            “It’s worse than you think,” I said, laughing, “so does my dad.”  I pulled out my fork to show him and we both broke out laughing. He raised an eyebrow and we looked around the room at all those unsuspecting cousins.

            “You mean all the plastic ware on that table have been used already?” he said.

            “Yep. Should we tell anybody?”

            “No way. It’s too late anyway.” Then, we saw Kim, another local, her mother another sister to the two culprits. The three of us had become pretty close as cousins go. We hated to leave her out so we approached as if we had unearthed a murderous family skeleton.

            “Kim,” I began, “Bobby and I want to tell you a secret.”

            “What’s that?” she grinned.

            “My dad and his mom save all their used plastic forks and bring them to this reunion. We brought our own!” We each pulled our stainless-steel forks out of our pockets.

            “Why do you think I’m carrying my own soda can?” Kim said, “My mom brings the cups.”

Blackberries, 2007

Old Soul Medicine Crow4 Comments

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

Old Soul Medicine Crow5 Comments

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.