Regressions to Help Phobias

I'm a day late but it was a Sunday Monday yesterday and a Monday Tuesday today so that's my story and I stick to it! Here's the Monday Memoir anyway.

I am aware everyone who reads this is not going to accept there is such a thing as reincarnation. That’s okay. I do believe but even if it is just a quirk of one’s mind, going back to the past, real or imagined, can help to ease the hold of old traumas and phobias that bring you down.

I’ve had a life long fear of water and the idea of drowning. This is one I have not been able to fully resolve or even help. I say it is because the drowning in a recent past life is still too immediate and difficult for me to deal with. No, I am sure I did not go down with the Titanic or anything nearly so exotic. I may have been on a vessel sunk in war, possibly in WWI. Perhaps I can work on this one someday or resolve it before I come back around again.

Another example, I have always had a dislike for high necked shirts, choker style necklaces and the

Melinda and me in Oct 2014

like. If anyone put hands near my throat or around my neck, I freaked out. After having had a couple of professional regressions—my dear friend Melinda Rucker Haynes is licensed hypnotherapist as well as a wonderful writer—I learned how to do some brief ones myself. Some years ago I was cooking dinner and had a flash.

I used Melinda’s opening cue—what do you have on your feet? “Why jackboots, o’ course,” came the ready answer from a voice in my head. Turned out I was in England about Elizabethan times and was a wild younger son of minor nobility. I played at being a highway man and got caught. My elder brother who wanted to rid himself of an embarrassment had me hung as a horse thief. Whoa! That was a shocker. I was not totally cured but from then on the issue was much less of a serious inconvenience. I could wear turtlenecks and necklaces that did not fall to mid chest! I could even stand a gentle touch around my throat or neck.

Then from my teen years on, I was troubled with very severe menstrual cramps almost every month. I could usually force myself to carry on with my “cowboy girl” duties which normally involved several hours of strenuous riding and other heavy work but I spent many nights in tears, with a hot water bottle on my middle and as many aspirin as I dared to take. The agony continued on into my middle years and I occasionally even had to miss work because I hurt so bad I was nauseous.  My husband had learned some hands on healing or pain taking techniques from an old Manx miner he knew as a boy and he could sometimes pull some of the pain for me but I still suffered.

One evening in my early forties I was curled up in my favorite chair listening to some Celtic music, probably the Chieftains, and drifting after downing  a couple of Excedrins when I faded out for a bit. I found myself as a young girl in the Mediterranean area close to 2000 years ago. I was the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish merchant whose home was a walled compound near a major city. I had an older brother and envied his freedom to go off with his friends. One day I sneaked out and followed them. They were drawn to a crowd to hear someone like St Paul speaking. He had harsh things to say about the sins of mother Eve and the dangers of women leading good upright men to sin. I fled, shocked and deeply troubled. Although I made it home undetected, that night my first period came and I was terrified it was punishment for my willful misbehavior and evidence of my sinfulness.  I soon came back to myself but with a vague memory that a couple of years later I was wed to an older man in an arranged marriage and died in childbirth after my first pregnancy.

Wow, that was a jolt! In this life I have borne no children, whether by some deep subconscious choice or just fate. Still, from that time on I did suffer less in the succeeding several years before I came to my end of those cycles and began my time as a Crone or older (wise?!) woman! I’d called it “Eve’s curse” or “The monthly miseries” for some thirty years or more  but after that vision I started to realize how natural female cycles are condemned and denigrated by the paterno-centric society and religious environment in which we live. We are supposed to suffer for the original sin of Eve and the flawed nature of feminine beings! What a foul lie! I weep now for my daughter and granddaughters (step-family but no less loved) who are still struggling with this burden.

While I am mostly supportive of the #metoo movement, the pink pussy hats and all the rest of today’s current women’s efforts, I feel they are really not going to the root of the issues. Until we can go back to full acceptance of a female deity, even a primary female deity, and women can openly express their devotion for a “god who looks like me,” we will continue to have conflicts, disrespect, abuse and contempt from males. True, individual men can be very supportive, respectful and understanding but they too labor under the same notion that “God” is a male and thus males are His favored and most honored, in His image and somehow vastly superior to the female version of humanity. In that view women are almost a necessary evil since man cannot produce the next generation on his own. Yet what else could they possibly be useful for? While half the human race—regardless of color, ethnicity and creed—are considered second class citizens how can we attain the highest goals?

So I hope perhaps some other regressions will eventually lead me to many more ways to work on this myself. Meanwhile all I can do is write, think, talk and pray to MY Female Deity that we can begin to make real progress in this and other related ongoing issues.

Memoir Monday--Addicted to Romance

An Addiction to Romance—Part I

Little wonder I became a romance writer, perhaps. There certainly seems to be a kind of inevitability about that direction. I always wanted to write; I was addicted to the idea of romantic love--voila!

Before I turned ten, I had grown enthralled by the fairy tale love songs from the golden age of operettas and musical comedies. I knew which evening the radio offered the magical program called “The Railroad Hour.” Which railroad sponsored it I cannot say, though, as my big interest in trains grew a bit later. Anyway, that weekly show featured tenor Gordon McRae and a variety of leading ladies of the musical world presenting the highlights of an operetta or musical each week. They sang the major arias and songs while a narrator provided the synopsis of the basic plot. Of course these were not the tragedies of grand opera so they all provided a satisfactory HEA (happily ever after) ending.

Before many more years had passed my reading habit devoured all the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Tarzan books in the local library and I moved on to ‘westerns’ by the likes of Zane Grey, Honore Willsie Morrow, Grace Livingston Hill and their ilk. To my delight, besides the adventures of saving the ranch, rescuing the wild horses, bringing down the bad guys etc. there was almost always a love story. By the time my teen years came along and hormones began to kick in, I knew exactly what I wanted: a handsome hero who would sweep me off my feet and carry me off to his castle or even better, his beautiful ranch full of fine proud horses and wonderful dogs!

The only problem was, I saw all of my puppy love beaus and celebrity crushes through rose colored glasses that magically wiped away almost ever flaw, wart, failing and very un-princely trait! They were actually all just regular boys or heroes only on the screen or in the rodeo arena. When their clay feet finally emerged I was devastated, but my insatiable hunger and faith that “He” was out there forced me to keep searching. Despite an exhausting sequence of heart breaking disappointments and disillusionment I kept trying. Surely all those books and love songs could not be wrong!

I was in sixth grade when I first noticed a boy as something special and not just another kid, basically all gender-neutral up to that point. Marvin was in the eighth grade in the one room school I attended at that time. He was a blue eyed blond with a fetching dimple and kind of a teacher’s pet, that teacher being my own father. Typical of puppy love, he noticed me slightly but had really not quite reached that “Oh wow, girls” stage. He teased me a bit and sometimes chose me for his team when we divided up for various games in which all the kids took part. I was not terribly athletic but could run fairly fast and did try, so I was not a really bad choice.

About once a week we had a kind of show and tell where everyone had to recite something, tell a story or sing a song. This day one or two had belted out “Your Cheating Heart” with good Hank Williams accents but I chose a tamer ballad, “Little Things Mean A Lot” which I had heard Kitty Kallen sing on the radio. I am quite sure my adored one did not get it although I looked right at him all the time!

The next year he was off to high school and gone and the following year I changed from the small rural school to a larger town school. My eighth grade class of about two dozen had only eight girls but I did not become an instant queen of the May. I was too busy trying to deal with the culture shock to spend much thought on romance. For the duration I focused mostly on the current top rodeo cowboys and a few movie and TV stars since the era of “the westerns” was just gaining real steam. One favorite was Casey Tibbs, the champ saddle bronc rider of the time. I was heart broken when he wed the daughter of the governor of South Dakota for I had dreamed of doing that and becoming a champion barrel racer myself. He was ‘cute’ (though my classmates did not think cowboys were ‘cool’) also with a dimple and a pug but fetching Irish mug.

Then I too got to high school, still in the same building and setting, and there was suddenly a “new kid in town.” Tyce was a brown eyed blond which combination I thought was “the most.” He was also into western things since his parents had bought a ranch in the area and he wore western shirts with his Levis and talked of horses. We never “went steady” or anything—both at the  too young to drive stage and I was already kept on a very short rein. But he pestered me all the time and very easily conned me into helping him with most subjects, even doing some of his homework or letting him copy mine. Oddly, he was exactly twenty days older than me, and for many years was the only guy near my age to win my regard. That lasted for the whole year, but after school ended, I never saw him again. He was sent off to military school since he’d not made good grades or behaved as his parents felt was necessary.

When the next year began, two districts had been consolidated to create a larger high school. Lo and behold, Marvin was now back, a senior by this time and swaggering around like a BMOC. He’d grown into a big galoot, suiting his new nickname of “Moose” and was really not very cute any more but my old infatuation returned and stuck to me like gum all year.  My admiration was not reciprocated now but it did not make much difference to me. I just knew he was waiting for me to grow up a little more. Alas that proved not to be the case! However, he managed to be co-salutatorian and at his graduation I recklessly vowed I would be valedictorian to surpass him.  The odd thing is, I did it!

During all that time, I still followed the rodeo and several of the TV westerns and even had a few short-lived other crushes but they never survived more than a few weeks or even days. Maybe I was actually ready to make a sea change…

The next year I dropped out of school fairly early in the semester  after missing several weeks due to a couple of injuries in riding accidents since by then our family was deep into a growing horse and mule business. When I recovered, instead of going back to school, I became the ‘segundo’ or #2 wrangler at Chuck-a-Luck Ranch. I was a full time ranch hand and mid-level trainer for the influx of animals that came our way. By the time I did return to school the following year, my perceptions and even my character had undergone some huge changes. For a year I had done an adult’s work, even a man’s work, and dealt with adults on near equal footing.

As a working cowboy girl, I had next to nothing in common with my schoolmates and boys no longer had any appeal at all. What did some stupid kid have to offer me? I recognized my celebrity crushes were equally pointless for they were not real nor physically present and for them, I did not even exist.  I had started to look at men and they were definitely looking back. At seventeen I might have been slim rather than buxom but I was athletic and filled my Levis well enough to be noticed. I wore some makeup, polished my nails and curled my shoulder length or longer hair despite my masculine duties. I was a strange mixture of hoyden, hussy and innocent which I later realized was appealing to many men on some level or other.

The new group I began to flirt with and dream of were flesh and blood males, wiling to play the game, at least to some degree, since most realized I was still jail bait and probably most were at least a bit intimidated by my dad’s reputation and even perhaps mine since I always carried a sidearm and was seen riding some clearly half-wild and not docile mounts. I suppose we brightened each other’s days a bit, me and these guys I now call “the young and restless.”

They were mostly 20-30 year old blue collar types who drove trucks, ran heavy equipment, delivered beer, propane or other commodities, worked on telephone and electric lines and similar jobs. Most were married and had become a bit disenchanted. The new had worn off on the cute bouncy little teen they had married, often hastily. She was now plump approaching fat, often slovenly, cross and tired, dragging around two or more little kiddos who were still at the whining, messy and demanding stages.

The men had to work to pay the bills and were often not happy in their jobs, so they amused themselves with motor cycles, fishing, hunting, cowboy pursuits like team roping and of course boozing and hanging out with their buds. And flirting with the older teens, especially the ones past eighteen who might be “available.” Actually I wasn’t available even after my eighteenth birthday, but I never said that in so many words unless pushed into a corner. The pistol usually precluded that as well as the horse or mule who was liable to jump, kick or otherwise act up if approached too quickly or aggressively. I was rarely seen apart from those activities, in truth.

In retrospect, I did walk a narrow edge for a time where one misstep could have  ended matters very badly. Either some innate caution or perhaps the intervention of my very overworked guardian angel saved me. Thus I turned twenty-one, working full time since my graduation, without having so much as been kissed! This now being the frisky sixties, that is little short of incredible. I hardly believed it myself.

However, I did not ‘date’ all through high school and opportunities to slip out at night were severely limited. I did go out a few times with the brother of one of my best girlfriends but those dates were very tame and chaste; maybe going to the movie or the Dairy Queen and home to an early curfew. We didn’t even hold hands! He was shy too.

Also in retrospect, I know now my state was greatly exacerbated by the emotional incest situation in which I lived. From about age ten, my father was determined to keep me snow-white pure, a virtual vestal virgin. Of course he could not claim me as an actual mate but I was a platonic surrogate spouse in many ways. It nearly choked the life out of me for I did not understand or have any idea how to deal with it. Ultimately I had to kick over the traces and my inappropriate flirtations were one symptom. In parental eyes I went abruptly from the chaste protected princess to an nonredeemable harlot and out-of-control slut. Considering how completely inexperienced I was, that is a supreme irony.

I never really took those flirtations seriously although I did have some crushes that could have gotten out of hand. I think I realized none of the young and restless were remotely prince charming material. Should one divorce or was actually single, if I let myself be ‘rescued’ I would soon be the barefoot and pregnant girl at home, out of one frying pan into another.

I also tried pen pals but that was no more satisfactory than any of the other efforts. One by one they drifted away. A few actually came and we met but none of them were anywhere near my dream cowboy or hero. They soon joined the rest of the ghostly hoard of “former fancies” along with Richard, the tractor driver putting in the gas lines; Vern and Gordon, the propane truck guys; Bud, the telephone lineman; Buster, the real cowboy; and the pen pals Howard, Wayne, Alfred, Daryl, Baird, Norm and Jose.  What a motley crew. Yet I still hoped. I had begun to lose that hope, really, but I still wanted so very much for my special someone to appear. There was no more telling me to wait and grow up, to be patient and stay clean and pure and deserving! Though I did not use such language then, I really wanted to say, “F**k that crap! I want to fall in love, to make love, to be loved and to get the hell out of this stifling prison you have me in!”

There I was, in the summer of 1964, a free love era anachronism. Most of my former schoolmates were married and moms, some had gone on to get a college degree and wed during or soon after. Without a prospect and having finally realized the futility of all the methods I had employed in my search for a fairy tale romance, I now simply kept my head down and slogged along, doing hard, dangerous and heavy work with which I had a love-hate relationship and feeling life passing me by like a fast freight.

Unbeknownst to me, I had caught someone’s eye. He was watching me from about May until we finally spoke in September. Another life changing event was heading my way. It was actually the first of several although I intended for some years that it be the one and only. Even there, fate had other plans. Still, I did get my very special romance and to this day cherish the memories. Better late than never or better to have loved and lost, perhaps.

What do I want to Be?

It may be a little bit ridiculous but at well over a half  century, I’m still trying to decide what I want to be “when I grow up.” Remember, growing older is mandatory but growing up is optional.  And I’m not at all sure I have gotten there yet!

Naturally I went through the usual kid ambitions such as a ballerina, an opera singer, a flight attendant, a nurse and of course my big rodeo queen and competing cowgirl phase. Even in the midst of them I sort of realized those were about as unrealistic and fleeting as my crew of “former fancies” (crushes and quasi-heroes) in the teen years. I was always a tomboy and a ‘tough little girl’ though, even in my most prissy and girly moments. 

In a lot of ways I tried to be ‘grown up’ from my mid teens on. A part of that I can now attribute to the Elder Daughter Effect which was well documented in a fairly recent book by a couple of wise women. Besides this inclination, I did have a lot of adult concerns, responsibilities and burdens to carry while parts of my development were blocked, denied and greatly delayed.  I was often in a semi-limbo of being fifteen going on forty five. Yet once broken free, there is no making up for lost time.

This was even more true of my youngest brother. He grew to biological manhood in an even more odd and warped situation and finally at thirty had to make a huge leap into adult life. I feel great compassion for him. In some ways his early death from an aneurysm seems almost a strange kind of suicide by neglect/default/denial. It is very sad. The middle brother fared somewhat better. As a Scorpio he had a fierce independent streak and basically went his own way  making little effort to ‘go along’ or fit in as Alex and I had mistakenly done, but he too bears scars. We did not have an easy youth. 

I used to joke about becoming a misanthrope and an eccentric old lady. I think I may have at least come close to accomplishing that, but that is not the serious sort of what-to-be I am speaking of. I tried to be a good mother and wife but as a ‘home maker’ I was probably not the best or my best. I had a very uncertain role model in that. My mother tried and excelled in a few areas but also fell far short in many. Had I been around my grandmothers more, especially the maternal grandmother, I might have absorbed some valuable lessons.

I tried always to be able to pay my way by being employed and keep the bills satisfied. In that I succeeded for the most part but the ‘career’ aspect never gelled. It was always just ‘a job’ by which my pay check was bought—I cannot really say earned although I tried generally to do well. Conscience would not allow less.

Certain things came easily to me and I thus never learned how to work-- I mean to focus, struggle, study and apply great effort. Oh, I can do manual labor and do so very adequately but ‘studying’ as one connects with academic efforts, managing and entrepreneurship are all really alien to me. Mental work was the odd part—some things I could do with only moderate effort while others were completely alien and incomprehensible to me. They still are, really.  If I did not ‘get it’ quickly I simply shoved things aside or detoured around them.

I always thought of myself as ‘creative’ and fancied I was good with words. My grades in such subjects were normally good to excellent and I scored high on verbal skills, vocabulary, and related aptitudes in many tests. I also had good spatial sense and manual dexterity. Other than hobbies, though, how have I applied such skills? Not gainfully, at least, sad to say.

The paid work I did so often involved my weakest traits: salesmanship, taking charge, convincing, leading, and talking/teaching. Although I eventually learned enough to get by, I was definitely no rock star! Had I been better or tried harder in math and science, I might have made a decent scientist, engineer or at least technician but that was not to be. Instead I was in Human Resources and did a somewhat mediocre job though I faked it well enough most of the time. My main specialty was in “classification” which was helping supervisors write job descriptions and then set the correct pay rate for that work. I was a fast study for picking up lingo and a good enough wordsmith to make things sound like whatever I wanted them to seem. It almost always worked.

Over time I grew very disillusioned and learned that the most frequent reward for doing  a volume of work and at least seeming to perform well was most frequently simply more work. Those who sloughed off and coasted along seemed to fare better, even more likely to be promoted (kicked upstairs?). When I finally had an opportunity to cut and run without literally losing my shirt, I did so and have never regretted that choice.  Had I stayed in civil service a bit longer, I’d have a few more dollars a month in my retirement but at what cost?

In my second career I became the paid or semi-professional writer I always wanted to be. It has been a good experience although not terribly lucrative. If I depended on those earnings I would be homeless and hungry! Still the extra dollars do help and it is an ago boost. I readily admit I am not a great writer or perhaps even a good one. I write genre fiction because I am a good story teller and can weave or spin a tale with no great strain. I suspect it is in my blood and genes from a long line of Celtic ancestors, mainly Welsh and Irish, both races fine bards and tale-tellers.

I never aspire to write literary fiction. Honestly, I do not generally like it, rarely read it, and find most of it depressing! In my opinion, there is more than enough disfunctionality, tragedy, darkness and gloom in real life that I see no reason to add to the overburden. Instead I lean toward hyperbole and wordiness, I ramble and yes, I call purple a favorite color for a reason! Melodrama and overkill I may allow and even a few too-precious metaphors and similes, especially when I go to poetry. But there are few literary pretensions such as references to Greek philosophers or any other ‘classic’ influences.

My other skills go to stringing beads and bending wire, shaping and shining stones and putting scraps of fabric together in what I hope are visually pleasing patterns for quilts, garments or fabric art of various kinds. So, I am still trying to create useful beauty and not sure whether the usefulness or the beauty dominate.

But what to be, ultimately and in the finest sense? Goodness, I have no clue. For now I can be an eccentric (or crazy) old dog lady who crafts stories, takes or draws pictures, puts bits and pieces together and does the same with words for rhymes and essays—like this one. Perhaps I can share a little bit of what I hope is wisdom gained in three quarters of a century of life—surviving if not truly thriving, and making many errors which I would spare others from if it were possible.  Do as I say, not as I did!  I can also be more independent than I ever was and really not care a hang what anyone thinks of me except a very few chosen folk whose regard and respect I value. That in itself is very liberating.  Maybe I should be content just to be me, grown up or not!

Ghosts of New Years' Past

Although New Years was never a big photo op around the Morgan place, it was a special time, especially when I was a small kid. My memories begin in our little house in Jerome when I was perhaps four or five and the only child. My parents were still devoted to the music of their younger days, the jazz, swing and big band sounds they had grown up with in the thirties and early forties. Dad had even played a few wind instruments in dance bands during his college years and was a big fan of the Dorseys, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw etc. Since that was what they often played, I became familiar with that music too.

By the time they were parents and had settled in Arizona, Mom's and Dad’s partying days were over. I don’t think Mom was ever into that scene too much but from what he told my brother when Charlie got interested in music, it seems that Dad was. He knew about the long, skinny joints lots of the musicians smoked and other such tidbits. I was never regaled with such tales; I suppose in the interest of preserving my innocence and ladyhood! But that was all in the past even in the late forties when my memories begin.

Anyway, on New Year’s Eve, the radio was tuned to hear the New Year in from coast to coast and to listen to the popular music of the times in various clubs from New York to Chicago or Kansas City, maybe Denver and on out to the west coast. That night I was allowed to come into the “big bed” in Mom and Dad’s room and snuggle under the covers to listen, too. I am sure I fell asleep long before the festivities were over but probably woke up as the local midnight hit. Then as now, some western folks were fond of shooting off their firearms to greet the year, mostly rather seriously intoxicated by that time.

There were also some fire crackers and possibly in a mining town even a stick of dynamite or two! That commodity was pretty readily available as many miners also did some prospecting on the side and some did the assessment work to file a claim on a patch of likely ground. At any rate, there would be quite a pandemonium for a little while. Once that died down, I was carried or urged back to my own bed.

This custom went on for a number of years, even a bit after Charlie was born and grew to a tyke  several years of age. He’d be snuggled in the middle then while I sprawled across the foot of the bed. He was then called Mike since Dad’s name was also Charles although he normally went by Chuck rather than Charlie. My brother was the third Charles Morgan although they each had different middle names. Charlie’s was Michael and he never did care for Mike, changing as soon as he got away from home. I rather did the same, even earlier. Saving that for another tale!

By the time we were too big to participate in this ritual, the music had changed a great deal. That happened very quickly in the middle to late fifties. Jazz was not the big band sound anymore but Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis did their brand and other later versions soon came along, mostly quite different and not greatly favored by our parents. As a teen I did stay up until midnight a few times but since I was not allowed to go out and party, it was not all that much fun by myself and the  house got cold when the fire was allowed to die. Thus it never got to be a habit.

To this day I cannot recall a single time I was out partying at the bewitching hour to whoop and cheer, get kissed or anything else.  Not even in college did I do this though some friends and I might have had a milder version in a dorm room or apartment. Have I missed some great rite or is it really that special? I can’t say, in all honesty. At any rate, I will spend this evening at home as usual, probably watch a bit of the traditional count-down on TV which still keeps a bit of the Dick Clark ambiance despite many more changes in the music that everyone expects to hear.

I confess to having developed a sneaking fondness for eggnog. I had never tasted it until I spent the holidays with my paternal aunts and uncle in California in 1965-66 and attended the big family dinners where I had my first taste of both wine and eggnog. My uncle’s wife at that time was French and was quite amenable to all the kids having a small glass of rose or some other wine with dinner. The kids were her four which Uncle had adopted and the three they produced plus one aunt’s two sons, only a bit younger than I was. I don’t think the eggnog was spiked but I decided I really preferred it, wine being an acquired taste. I enjoy some wines now but that was long ago. These days I prefer my eggnog with a good shot of rum and a generous sprinkle of nutmeg stirred in.  I’ll go fix one in a minute.

Right now I am listening to the bilingual program that is aired five evenings a week on the nearest PBS radio station from the campus of NMU at Las Cruces. I am not too fluent in Spanish but can understand most of what the hostess says in her native tongue before she gives the English version and I’ve always enjoyed all the Latin varieties of music. Later there will be jazz. I may listen to that  or turn on the TV for an hour or two since the news will be a bit patchy among bits and pieces of ABCs special coverage.

As I fall asleep—maybe before the local pandemonium begins but probably afterwards since the dogs will be a bit upset--I’ll think back with a bit of nostalgic melancholy to those long ago times listening to the music of a bygone day in the security of my parent’s bed. If I were an artist, I would paint the scene a la Rockwell; I can visualize clearly but in no way recreate it. So I have to make do with my words: comfort, mild excitement, longing to be ‘grown up’ and party, security and feeling special. The inner child barely stirs with the memories. Perhaps she’s been locked away too long.

Happy 2019 to one and all. May it be better than any previous ones but not quite as good as 2020 and others in the future. Go in peace and harmony!

Ghosts of Christmases Past

Photographs are great memory joggers. That’s one reason why I am so thankful for and cherish the trove of old family pictures I have fallen heir to as matriarch of my clan, more or less. Of course this time of year one tends to look back unless you are still waiting for Santa to arrive. I drift clear back to 1943, my first Christmas.

On December 25, 1943 I was just eight months old so I cannot claim to recall anything about it. The

country was at war and we were living in my paternal grandparent’s home. Dad may have been in basic training as he had finally been drafted but I am not sure. All I have is a couple of photos of me in my high chair beside the Christmas tree while mom hovers protectively close to be sure I did not snatch an ornament or tip my chair!

As an aside, my parents were both very protective of their miraculous first born creation. I think they would have been happy to keep me no more than a toddler for the next twenty years at least. As the first grandchild on both sides, I am sure I must have been spoiled. Am I still? I give my classic southwest shrug ~ and say, “Who knows?”

Somehow there are no pictures from my next two Christmases, 1944 and 1945. The first of those we were in Massachusetts and the next back in Kansas City, just before we headed west early in 1946. So the next documented one is 1946, our first in the little house in Jerome. I recognize a few of the toys I got that year which I mostly kept a long time but I cannot really recall the day. In this one I remember the big baby doll. I had her for a long time and she was the last gift from my paternal grandfather. I also had the little stove Dad had made for me. Somehow holiday meals and such never left much impression with me.

There were others with pictures but I skip ahead to 1951 which was  a very significant and memorable one for me. I was now a big sister! What I found under the tree that year definitely took a back seat to the six-week-old living baby doll I held in my arms that morning while Dad took pictures. I may have been the first but he was definitely proud of his new son who was to carry forward the name and become the third Charles Morgan although all had different middle names.

The 1952 year slipped by, noticed but not really significant.  Then Christmas 1953 found us in a new home. We had moved from Jerome down to Clarkdale, another Phelps Dodge built Verde Valley town in the late fall and were barely settled when Christmas came around. Still, we did not pass the date without due celebration. By now young Charlie, then called Mike from his middle name of Michael, was old enough to get pretty jazzed about the holiday.  Also by then I was doing most of the decorating, a task which I kept up until I left home some years in the future.

I’ll make one more leap ahead to end in 1957, the last of the family Christmases to be properly documented. Others in turn were celebrated but from then on the family’s condition and situation began a gradual but accelerating slide to the final disastrous crash in 1967. There were no more Christmas or birthday photos and holidays were often shadowed by disruptions that still throw some shade on our pleasure in them.

By 1957, I was becoming a young lady or at least supposed to be! I wore lipstick a bit and had developed a figure of sorts although I stayed very slim and slight for a number of years. That year I got a .22 revolver to carry when I went out riding as I had begun to do so by myself and to go increasingly farther on such jaunts. Dad had made a belt and holster for it which would keep it secure even if some of my mounts could get frisky at times. I did feel quite grown up with this recognition which was practical more than flattering or a privilege in all reality. I was fourteen and Charlie was six. He had not been out of his body cast too long following a very severe broken leg, a spiral fracture of the thigh bone caused my mare Tina in a freaky, painful accident. Alex was still two years away from making his appearance into the family.

Later Christmases passed and I kept the habit of  trying to keep them as cheery and fun as I could for Charlie and then for Alex after he joined the family in 1959. At least dad always relented or recovered enough to go get a tree, which meant a lot to all of us. He suffered declining health both physical and emotiona, and things were often far from pleasant. We never had a tumbleweed, but some of those little junipers and a few pinons were pretty ragged, Charlie Brown type trees. Still, once they had colored balls and tinsel and some home made glittery things hung over and on them, they all magically became pretty and special. The last few ended up in the inner corner of my room, which was perhaps intended to be a dining room and served as the hallway from the living room to the kitchen.

Two special later gifts stand out in my mind. We did not have much money to spare at that time for shopping and surprises but mom collected S&H Green and Gold Bond trading stamps and usually put them to good use getting things we kids wanted or quietly hinted for. In our house, one did not make big lists and expound on all the things we expected to receive. We just didn’t; we knew it would not be well received nor would it accomplish anything. But my 18^th Christmas in 1961, I got my first camera, a Kodak “Brownie” which Mom had acquired with trading stamps. I loved that camera and used it for several years, eventually passing it down to Charlie when I got a slightly fancier Ansco camera that even used flashcubes to take indoor shots!

Some special memories were captured by those two cameras. Sadly many are among those lost, at least for now, with my hard drive crash this past summer.  I had scanned the negatives or prints and tossed them—my bad for not getting them moved to safe keeping soon enough.

Then the next year or so, I got a small phonograph. I’d been collecting records for awhile, mostly LPs, struggling to pay for them with a very small intermittent allowance or payment for the work I was then doing and sometimes finding and selling pop bottles. Today’s kids would raise a brow and say I was really lame and pitiful!! Anyway, I had a very mixed collection to which I added as we could all finally enjoy them. Another trading stamp acquisition, that little machine served me well and in time was passed down to Charlie and even to Alex.  Mostly gifts were not a big issue in my Christmas memories but those stand out because they meant so much to me. I never got a dog or horse as a Christmas gift. If I had they would surely be high on the special memory list but that just did not happen.

An Unfinished Story

There may be a reason—well, really there are several—but I became a romance writer because I believe in happy endings. I know life does not always give them to us, but I still believe that sooner or later, they do come.

I know I have mentioned and alluded to “Dusty” a number of times in this blog. I’ve never really shared the story, though. I was twenty one when I met my first love, in many ways the greatest “love of my life.” Sadly that story did not have a happy ending but I call it unfinished because I still believe there is more to be written, though not in this world and lifetime.

At the time I was two years past high school having missed a year as a time out between my sophomore and junior years. I was working long and hard as a real cowboy girl, putting in fifteen or sixteen hour days in the summer and dark to dark in the winter. There were anywhere from 30-50 horses, mules and donkeys mainly in my care. I was responsible for their feed, water, exercise, and stable and corral cleaning as well as breaking and training many of them. It was not an easy life and made more difficult by the fact I was ostensibly working for my dad with whom my brother and I had many issues.

Dad was in declining health both physically and mentally and not an easy person to deal with at his best. There were times he micro-managed, others when he was virtually absent for days on end, and constantly critical, demanding and often quite vicious about it. Nothing we did was ever satisfactory, me especially since I was ‘in charge’ over Charlie, then in his early teens. Our frequent reward was tantrums and lectures.

With 20-20 hindsight I can look back on my teen and young adult years with better understanding and put names on the problems I had to deal with. I was a prime example of the elder daughter type who always had to try to ‘fix’ things, be responsible and attempt to please and placate everyone. Impossible under the circumstances!! That was bad enough, but I was also the child half of a serious case of emotional incest which accounts for the extremely strict and limited social experiences I’d had at that point.  I could not be my father’s sweetie and spouse but darned if anyone else could violate my ‘purity.’ I might as well have lived in a nunnery!

Anyway at that point, major construction efforts were going on in the Verde Valley with the new cement plant being built, some housing and mercantile expansion etc.  Quite by chance I met one of the team leaders and for those unfathomable reasons by which people are sometimes drawn together, we hit it off. For a number of months Dusty and I did nothing except talk; I’d be out riding and we’d cross paths, often on Friday afternoons when they got off early working four ten hour days and a half on Friday.Gradually we learned about each other. He was in his late thirties, a veteran, an adopted orphan, caught up in a brutal custody fight over his eight year old son and hampered somewhat by having quit school to go into the service and not having a diploma. He had also suffered from asthma most of his life but had overcome it most of the time.

I explained some of my circumstances although many I never spoke of and hardly even recognized or understood at that point. I did know trying to get out at night to go on a regular date would be nearly impossible and for awhile that was okay. Dusty would come out to one of the areas where we housed a bunch of stock on a leased place and help me feed, doctor or do repairs some evenings. Maybe we would ride a little while together, still talk or simply share some time. Although raised in the east he had come west young –after one enlistment--absorbing all of the aspects he could and had a secret dream to own a ranch. 

The closeness and respect built gradually until we admitted we were in love. About that time the company moved him to another project but he came back every chance he got to see me. Even though letters and the visits we could manage were our main contact, we reached a point of commitment where we were talking about the rings we wanted to have when we married in a year or so.

Then all hell broke loose. Most of it I did not learn for some time. There was an accident at a work site where some equipment was damaged and a couple of men were hurt. Someone in the higher echelons had it ‘in for’ him and he got the blame. They said he lacked the education and experience and such to manage properly etc.  For the time being, he had also lost the custody issue but still pursued it. All the stress and problems gave him a very severe asthma attack about which I did not learn for some weeks. Remember, there were no cell phones or email in the 1960s and my family then did not even have a regular phone!

This catastrophe was made much worse for me when about the same time my family’s many issues finally imploded totally. My parents’ failure to pay a bunch of bills –there were lawsuits which were always supposed to get the finances back to good again but they never worked--resulted in livestock being seized, a truck repossessed and finally the family being evicted from the rented house they then lived in. By then I had started college in Flagstaff so had most of my personal things with me but was roman riding across two very different worlds. I lost many animals I had loved and labored for, saw my family homeless and dispersed and my father institutionalized for some months with an insanity plea in lieu of a felony conviction for assault. He had supposedly fired several shots into a vehicle that turned out to be a guy delivering newspapers early in the morning. 

Once all that dust settled, I finally learned through a couple of mutual friends that Dusty had been fired and had taken work in California. We kept in sporadic touch for quite awhile but it was difficult. I still held to hope and I think he did too, but then I left Flagstaff after graduation and took a job with the US Army in Fort Huachuca and moved to Sierra Vista. I had no way then to reach him to let him know where I was. He moved a lot in the new job and again, no cell phones.I wrote thru the company but did not hear back for months.  Late that spring I started seeing the man I was to marry a few months later. When Dusty finally tracked me down and called --he had crossed paths with an old frend of mine who knew where I was--I had to say I was days from being married; I know he was hurt and I felt a sharp loss too, but fate had drawn a line and there was no rewind. I had to hurt one person or three including two kids who had only months before had lost their real mom. I've often questioned my choice but I have to think it went as it was supposed to. 

  

It was a long time before I found Dusty again —or rather anything he had gone through between the 1971 and 2003. After Jim died I went on line—oh, if that had only been available forty years earlier! They now had many “people finder” sites and so many other tools. It took some time but I eventually learned he had passed away September 8, 1993, some two weeks after his  August 20 birthday. I briefly contacted his son then but only to confirm that fact. John did not really know me as I had only met him briefly a time or two when he was still a small kid. 

Several years ago I did meet Dusty in a dream. He told me he was not angry or hurt; we both knew we were just not meant to share this lifetime despite our hearts’ wishes. He had remarried after a time and apparently she had been a good person just as Jim Walton was to me. In the dream we parted in peace and calmly.

Then a few days ago I dreamed again—just a fragment came into waking with me but in that bit we had finally gotten back together. We walked into a store selling Indian jewelry and western wear etc.  It was near my birthday and he wanted to get me something for that and an immediate token of our being together again at last. In a display I saw a ring, very similar to the ones we’d talked of in earlier, happier times. I told him that was what I wanted. The clerk took it out just before I awoke, leaving the image clear in my mind.

In the next day or two an ad popped up on my computer. I have bought jewelry items to include some turquoise things from several e-venders so I see such often but this one had a ring—a ring just like the one from my dream and the style with which we had once planned to be married… I ordered it. Oh yes, are there no coincidences? 

I may be a romantic nut-case; in fact I am sure I am! Still this seems like an omen of some sort, a communication between two very connected spirits who currently exist in different realms. I feel it reaffirms a bond that has never truly been broken. If he will have me, I owe Dusty a life—he saved mine several times when I was in deep depression and disarray over things at home—and also the lifetime we did not get to share in this one. I wear that ring now as my talisman, a symbol of my long-ago promise until I can either confirm or release from it. May this story someday have a happy ending in another place and time.

Houses and Homes--part 1

As we all know, a house is not always a home. It may be our domicile but for a residence to be "home" it has to satisfy certain criteria. Some do and some do not. Over the course of my life I have lived in quite a number of different places--sometimes just "camping" with some sort of a roof over my head and other times feeling I had a real home, at least for a time.

1535 75th Street

The first house I came to within a day or two of my birth in Kansas City, MO on the afternoon of April 27, 1943 was the home where my father had lived with his parents and siblings for several years, though not his first home. In my memories, which cannot be anything but the most vague since I never saw it after I was about thirty months old, I see Tara from Gone With the Wind--a great white edifice closer to a mansion than a regular house. That is not quite accurate but it was a large and very nice home located at 1535 West 75th Street in Kansas City. I suppose to some it was home but I don't have that sort of attachment to it.

My parents soon relocated for a short time to small cottage in the general neighborhood and then moved to Cambridge, MA while dad was employed by Raytheon  after a training accident ended his very brief military career.  There we lived in another two story house though smaller than the Kansas City one. This one was located on Edgewater Drive in a Boston suburb and was painted a dark red with white trim. it had what is called a mansard roof and a sun porch--definitely not a Massachusetts Room LOL but nice on sunny days during the chilly winter. From there we went back to Kansas City for a few months in the last part of 1945.

KC cottage

121 Edgewater Drive, Waltham, MA

Early in 1946, mom and dad loaded up in their 1939 black Ford coupe and started off for the long trek to Arizona which was to be their main home for the rest of their lives. By that deed, I came to consider myself an Arizona native since I cannot really remember living anywhere else. My memory starts in a little stucco "company house" on a hill in Jerome, Arizona. Jerome was a Phelps Dodge mining town and many of the residences were owned by the firm and used to house their employees. As Word War II ended, mining started to wind down somewhat and there were vacancies. My parents rented one fora very economical fee. That house was my first real home. For the most part I was secure and happy there, an only child for most of the time and still a bit of a pet or toy to my parents as their first born. We stayed there from about April 1946 until November 1953. So house #164 Sunshine Hill saw me from a toddler of three until I was past ten.

164 Sunshine Hill

From there we moved down into the Verde Valley and took up residence in other company houses, now owned by Haliburton who had taken over the former Phelps Dodge smelter and other facilities in Clarkdale and later built the cement plant which is now owned and run by the Yavapai tribe, sometimes incorrectly called the Yavapai Apache. We leased 409 and 413 Lower Main, one that we lived in and the other kind of office/shop/storage space. I was to call that place home from November 1953 until I went off to Flagstaff to start college in September 1966, or actually part time until the summer of 1967 when a number of issues finally came to a head and the family was evicted. That is a totally distinct tale and much too long and complex to share here. For a number of years that was the longest I had resided in one place.

409 Lower Main, Clarkdale

The photo of the Clarkdale house is from 1989. The trees were not there back in the late 1950s nor was the front porch. The two little houses were pretty ugly and bare while we lived there. I may find a photo or two later but hold little fondness for the place now and call myself gladly gone. It was perhaps a home part of the time; at others just where I lived. The houses there are now privately owned and mostly have been fixed up and remodeled nicely.