The Rawhide Butterfly, Shoving Smoke and Herding Cats

I have a penchant for odd titles. Often my fiction tales actually start from a catchy or odd title that pops into my head.  No surprise, my blog posts are often the same although there the essay normally comes first. I'm really trying hard to get back to posting regularly here, at least once a week.

The last few years I've been working less on fiction and more on family history, memoirs and my--mostly--Monday Memoir essays about things I recall from times gone by.  The memoir essays are shorter--anywhere from two or three pages to ten or a few more. They are by no means chronological and mostly have come out of a group I took part in for awhile that focused on getting 'seniors' to write about their lives, often covering topics the "millenials" and later generations have no clue about. My 'official' or more formal memoirs will hopefully be mostly chronological, at least following logical and time-linked progression through various topics such as school, my cowboy girl days, wife and motherhood roles, and similar somewhat distinct epics. Since some will overlap, that pattern will not be perfect but much more organized than the random recollections.

Yes, I do at times stop and ask myself who in the world will be bored or so uninspired as to want to read all this drivel. Will even one soul ever get an ah-ha moment and think, "No way! I am not ever going to do that!" Will someone laugh tolerantly and see just a vague, blurred reflection of their own one-time folly? I may well delude myself to harbor even one thought that my words and experience matters. Well, who knows. I give an eloquent shrug learned from many Latina friends over the years and say, "Quien sabe?" But I am a writer and writers write. I always have--since age six or so-- and probably always will. I started a diary or journal at age 12 and carry that on to this day. And I've put my heart and angst into many verses. In another guise, I write fiction, love stories, naturally, with 'adventures' happening all around.

And titles! Ah, that is kind of fun. I've been calling the short essays "Memories of a Rawhide Butterfly" for some time now. That odd phrase came to my mind a very long time ago. I was in the throes of getting ready to leave what had become a safe haven and routine in college, ending a couple of star-crossed love affairs that were almost intertwined, and jumping into the unknown with a new job, a new home and yet another attempt to reinvent myself, at least in part. The dichotomy and paradox of those two words fascinated me and seemed to represent the somewhat schizophrenic or split personality creature that was me. On the one hand I was hard, tough, strong and enduring, made so by the life I had lived up to that point, the cowboy girl.  On the other I was a dreamer, an addict to romance in all its forms, sensitive and fragile in ways I mostly tried to hide, more out of self-protection than being abashed to admit to them. So that phrase became my self-vision, the persona which now I open to anyone who reads some of my adventures and escapades.

On the other, both by chance and at times by choice, I seem to have always taken on difficult, challenging and sometimes downright unbelievable jobs, life styles, goals, dreams and causes. What would best describe that? I stumbled upon "Shoving Smoke and Herding Cats" I think that covers it rather well!  At times I almost succeeded for a minute or two; maybe the Powers-That-Be took pity or felt a twinge of remorse for the stumbling blocks that were forever littering my long and winding road! Like a small win at the gambling table, that would induce me to keep believing, keep trying, keep reaching and striving. Even on my darkest days, of which there have been many, a dim spark still lingers and flares now and then to make me get up and try one more time. I really do not know how to do anything else.

A poem, my first use of Rawhide Butterfly, written in early 1971 I believe. The verse comes out of my Walking Down My Shadows anthology. Yes, another title with a story, to save for another day.

The Rawhide Butterfly

Love has to be a butterfly

Iridescent, flying free—

That only lights to fly away

Leaving a haunting memory.

Rawhide bound the west together

Before the barbwire’s day

It lasted, lasted, lasted

In the Red and Brown men’s way.

Would not a rawhide butterfly

Live for a thousand years

Though parched by droughts of loneliness

And stained and stretched with tears?

My love is a rawhide butterfly

That lingers, binding tenderly,

That has too strong a will to die

And lasts almost eternally.

Memoir Mon-er Wednesday?

Two days late and a few dollars short as well. Story of my life! LOL but that's to keep from bawling!
Anyway some more memory files stuff here.

A peculiar OCD obsession

From a relatively early age I’ve had a predilection for keeping things as tidy and organized as I can, especially in my yard and the area around my home.  At no more than ten or so, I would get busy several times a year and try to pull or chop the weeds, gather and throw away the wind-blown trash,  and collect like things together into neat piles and groups. There was plenty of that to work with!

To amplify on this, my family has a overwhelming tendency to be ‘pack rats’ approaching hoarder status. With a vague dream and plan to eventually acquire property for ‘a ranch’ and then be able to build all kinds of facilities and structures, my dad gathered tons—literally!—of materiel when the mining operation shut down in Jerome, AZ in the early 1950s. Phelps Dodge sold off all kinds of structural materials such as metal pipes, beams and sheets. This stuff accumulated along with piles of rails and posts for future fences and corrals and other ‘stuff’.  Sadly we mostly operated on leased or rented property and most of it was never put to the intended uses.

A lot of it was too heavy and massive for me to move but I at least cleaned up the windblown trash and cut the grass and weeds as best I could. Of course as I grew older, I was able to do more and a better job but I started this very young.  I kept that up until I finally left home in my early twenties. 

There was no call for my services in that vein while I was in college and later living in rented apartments and mobiles as a young working single but in time I married and began again to have a home base. My new family was not quite as collection prone but I did make an effort to keep our yard clean and added to that an eagerness to have flowers, trees and shrubs to add beauty and pleasure to my environment. I still do that although I have had to move many times and leave behind the fruits of my labor and stewardship. I’ve bade a sad farewell to the pyracanthia, the young trees, the iris and other bulb and tuber flowers and many, many rose bushes. Here in my current home I’ve planted roses, lilac and this past spring three forsythia bushes. They will all have to stay when I move, which I hope will happen in the coming year.

I’ve also made a practice of doing a major cleaning and rearranging of my living space, be it just a room or even only part of a room or a whole house. That effort always includes going through my possessions and getting rid of some of them—outgrown or no longer favored clothes, supplies and some unfinished projects of art, craft or sewing which somehow got lost and fell from my enthusiasm and interest, even sometimes books—although books have always been very cherished possessions—and a variety of trinkets and souvenirs. If I felt they had any use still, I would try to donate them. Goodwill, Salvation Army, ARC, St Vincent DePaul and other charities have been frequent recipients.

I am sure I drove a couple of roommates nearly bonkers my first year in college—I was still so used to being outside and very active that I had energy to burn and it often went to rearranging our room. I tried to limit it to my half but sometimes got carried away! The next year I had a solo room and that was better for everyone’s sanity. And the apartment I was in for the last two years was very limited as to how one could place the furniture, most coming with the space. By the time I had a new family, I had tamed this urge and did not force anyone to come home to an unfamiliar space more than a time or two.

In my current home I have changed things in my room (The Red Dog Room, that is) about three times in seven years. I had to measure and plan to get my bed with the head to the north. I’m really OC about that as other directions are either bad feng shui or simply feel wrong to me for the earth’s energy does not flow through my resting body correctly. Since this room is also my ‘office’ I had to work out a way to get my computer, a file cabinet and other paraphernalia placed in a workable manner. So it is crowded, I admit, and probably appears cluttered and less than appealing. It really is, to be honest, but the best I can do for now. This whole house is tooooo small, one big reason for wanting to relocate.

But the yard is neat; between us, my brother and  I keep the ‘junk’ very neatly stacked and stored, the grass mowed,  the weeds down and I nurse my flowers along as best I can. The soil here is not good and it would take decades of composting and fertilizing to improve it. In addition the water is laden with salts and minerals that are not nutritive for most plants. The few yards you see that are really pretty are mostly old and you can be sure have had years of TLC. There is a lot of gravel, bare ground and straggly looking plants! And in many yards a lot of junk, too, mostly scattered everywhere.  I almost itch to get in and tidy up, clean around and sometimes haul off—but that is not my duty! I doubt if the owners would appreciate my efforts. So I tell myself , "Mind your own business," and the Red Dogs on our walks are quite willing to encourage me so that we go on.

Mixed memoir and present day!

Flora of the high desert

I probably acquired a lasting interest in the native plants of Arizona and the rest of the southwestern high desert region when I was very small. When we lived in Jerome, my parents became friends with a neighbor, Leslie N Goodding, who I later came to know  was a world-renowned botanist and expert on dry land plants! He even discovered and classified a number of species and they now bear his name. They often went out on expeditions with him and learned a great deal. By osmosis I guess I did too.

Mom with Mr Goodding- C: 1949

Me about 9, a future outdoors woman!

Although in general I am anything but scientifically inclined, learning the names of things has been a long-term fascination. In the back of my mind lurks the primitive notion that knowing the name of anything gives you power over it! Today I really cannot remember when I could not identify most of the members of the gramma grass family, differentiate  the two main varieties of juniper that grow here, and recognize a variety of weeds, both those that were harmless or even good and those that were not, such as thorny, invasive or poisonous to livestock.

This morning I went off for my normal morning walk with the Red Dogs in tow, Ginger striding along eagerly and Little Rojo wishing to stop and sniff—and pee—on every sprig of grass or clump of weed.  It’s early fall now and the plants are all growing hard to reach the seed producing stage before cooler times shut them down. For fun I tried to identify as many as I could.

Among the weeds there was Puncture Vine, the nasty little spreading weed that produces the terrible goat head or bull head two pronged thorns as seeds—steer the dogs clear of that one! Rag weed is prevalent as is Russian Thistle or tumbleweed—which comes in two kinds, one blooming pink and the other white though otherwise very similar. (Both allergens!)  We saw African Rue, an invasive and a very hardy but not good one. Eradication efforts are very difficult and seem only marginally successful. Several others are familiar but their names either forgotten or never known and I cannot find in my weed books.  One has tiny dark pink flowers that look like pin head roses and another with five petaled fuchsia colored blooms  about ½ inch across, both viney type low to the ground and spreading.

In the grasses, there was the fast growing six weeks gramma and its larger cousin, side-oats gramma, and another that could be either blue or curly—only discernible on close examination. We also steer clear of the Sand Burr, another grass but one that produces round seeds with a dozen ugly, slightly hooked spines on each one. They mat a dog’s coat and often invade hay fields, creating a miserable problem for horses or other stock eating the hay. Back in long ago days, I did a good bit of reaching in and cleaning the burrs out of my equine’s mouths and trying to dig the tips of the thorns out of my own fingers. There is feather finger grass, crested wheat, red spangle-top and a few others in our neighborhood also.

It’s fallish as I said, so that means the mesquite leaves are going dull olive-gray, far from the lovely vivid spring green they show when they first emerge. Beans are ripening and falling, food for many of the wild creatures since they are somewhat sweet and high in protein. Even the creosote is dulling down. It’s normally a kind of acid green with small yellow flowers that turn to fuzzy mini-cotton balls of seeds. Now it too is more grayish or tan with the green.

Many folks think of desert as barren sand dunes but except for a few areas such as the middle of the Sahara and places like our local White Sands, that is not true at all. The low desert has many cacti and a variety of weeds and shrubs. The high desert which ranges up to the lower levels of juniper, pinon pine and some scrub oaks, has a great diversity of plant life and not a lot of barren at all. The streams are edged with cottonwood, sycamore, salt cedar and other trees while the hills have grass and weeds, green when there have been good summer rains and then fading back to the colors that blend with the soil and rocks.

Yes, I love the desert. In theory at least I have lived a number of lives in desert regions, some as a member of earlier Native American tribes and some perhaps even in other worlds. Although most of my ancestry is currently Celtic, mostly Irish and Welsh, the green, moist and misty places are not my heart’s home. Perhaps I--or my energy-entity--has been elsewhere too long although I think I did live there in many past times as well.

Fall mesquite

NM fall flowers

Creosote in bloom

Memoir Monday--September Songs

I sat out on my patio and breathed in the air, still a bit more humid than the usual high desert 5-10%  but pleasant. This thought came then to me: "This is a quintessential early September day." The sky was the perfect blue--soft turquoise along the horizons  shading to a deep true sapphire overhead. White decorated it for contrast--everything from fragile lacy veils and feathers to wanna-be thunderheads that could not quite pull it off. Exactly the setting that makes September my favorite month in the high desert, my heart's home. While I might prefer to be in Arizona, today Alamogordo can stand in well enough.

They say you can't go home again and I know that is true. You can no more return to beloved places you remember than put your hand into the same bit of water in a rushing stream, whether a second or a decade has passed. That being said, I am not sure where "home" is right now; more a place in memory and likely more rosy than the reality was because nostalgia puts seamless and splendid retouching to those mental pictures. In time perhaps I will find a new one for the last days, weeks, months or years of my life but I also feel there is no rush.

Patience has never been my strong suit but encroaching age forces one to slow a bit, to take time to smell the roses while catching one's breath from some mad dash or strenuous chore. And I find I am thankful for that.  Somehow the driving force that for most of my life was a self-applied cattle prod  has weakened greatly so that I can now sit and veg with little feeling of guilt or remorse. I can take time to go back and revisit special memories and sift away the less happy ones so they blow off like chaff and fade to almost nothing. Truly I have been blessed with some very wonderful experiences in my life, lots of work and some harsh and hurtful things of course, but far overbalanced by the unique and amazing special times.

Today would have been my 47th anniversary. A couple of hours ago on September 3, 1971, I stood in the opening between the living room and a small den in my father-in-law's home and vowed to love, honor and cherish a man and his two kids who were still at home. I believe I kept that vow as well as anyone could. Rev John Y Allen, a local Methodist minister in Bisbee, presided. Before he conducted the ceremony, he took the two children aside and asked them if they were willing to accept me as the new mother-figure in their lives. They said they would. Had they not agreed I do not think he would have performed the marriage. I honor his memory for that significant gesture.

That house, now in a sad state of disrepair, is a current problem to me but in time the issues will be resolved. Just a reminder than one cannot go back. From that day I received thirty two years of good times and really very few bad ones. I grew and changed and learned so much. I have some very-much-loved grandchildren who are mine by heart if not by blood.  My second hand daughter is especially dear, from that day forward. She jokes in a most loving way about how lucky she was with her "wicked step mother." Well, I was lucky with her also. She has become a fine woman and raised three kids of her own, mostly as a single parent.

A late summer rainbow in Bisbee

Sept clouds in Camp Verde

Many other September memories cross my thoughts today, some that I will share as the month progresses. Returning to school--it always started after Labor Day back then; looking forward to fall which has always been my favorite season with trips and activities peculiar to this month and some to October, meeting and then sharing times with the first adult love of my life, finally heading off to college as I mentioned in my last post, and may other special highlights. Yes, September sings me many songs now as I look back across the years and am comforted by a day such as today. A gem set  between the hot and sometimes stormy days of summer and the chilling, darker times as winter  approaches, September is a truly magical and precious time.

Me, ready to start 7th grade

Jennifer-1st grade