It is a sunny, cold December morning in California. Dad is finally home. I am a curious seven year old full of unanswered questions. Where has Dad been? Why don't Mom explain? When I grow up I discover that 1954 is the year of my veteran father's break down and involuntary stay in a psychiatric hospital. At seven, all I know is that he is out of a job, mom is looking for work, and we are “poor.” We are told not to expect Christmas this year. Is Santa also poor? As the oldest, I hold the responsibility of creating a joyous holiday for my siblings tight to my heart.
We bake cookies; we cut out and make paper chains for the tree we found on BLM land up the mountain from our house. This tree looks scrawny in our living room, just as I think our Christmas will be. My grandparents are babysitting my toddler brother while my mom goes to job interviews. I am in charge of my younger sister; Dad, well, Dad is in his own world. I walk down our narrow hallway and hear Dad talking to someone in the bathroom. I catch a glimpse of Dad's twisted face as he stands before the mirror. I love my father fiercely, and know something is wrong.
It is the Fifties, and our small neighborhood is full of children. We all walk the fifteen blocks to our elementary school and we all learn to ride a two wheeler by sharing the same small, training-wheeled bike. My sister and I skip down the street to play with sisters Dawn and Denise. All the adults in the neighborhood treat us well. We don't understand Dad's recent comments about trusting no one. Though kids come to our backyard to climb and swing on our swings or to play dress up, families rarely visit. I am a sensitive, gregarious child who loves school, loves having friends and desperately wants our family to be close and loving.
Mom's usual childlike joy is heavy with quiet despair. Dad isn't himself; he needs a rest. The merriest of holidays are upon us and I have never felt so sad. No ones knows what we're going through, I think. Even Nanny and Grampy, my mother's parents, send disapproving glances Dad's way, which does nothing to add to the mood. But we have a tree and we have cookies and on Christmas Eve we children sit by the huge living room window, wishing for snow and reindeer.
Christmas morning dawns with us slowly sliding out of bed. We hear sounds in the kitchen and smell eggs and bacon frying. Mom's smile greets us as we tip-toe and stand at the entryway. “Nanny and Grampy brought over a bag of groceries last night,” she announces, “and there are some surprises from them under the tree.” We race to the tree to grab the gifts our grandparents brought us. Dad is still in his pajamas, sitting in his favorite brown leather chair, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. He gives us a half-hearted smile and a half-hearted Merry Christmas as we reach for our packages. “I feel so awful Santa Claus couldn't make it this year,” he moans. Then suddenly we hear a loud knock on our front door. Dad jumps and Mom wipes her hands on her apron as she unlocks the door and pulls it open. I run to her side. We step out onto our porch and look up and down the street...no one. Then we turn around and notice a sign on our screen door and this string tied to the handle: “Follow the string,” it states.
It's a chilly morning for the San Fernando Valley, and I stand, staring at the sign and at the string. The excitement pours into my body and warms me up. We gather together; even my dad looks amazed. We kids are at the head of our family line and hold onto this thin string: we follow it to our front yard, along the edge of our bushes, around the side bed of roses, across our driveway, up to our garage door. There the string is tied to the handle, which is decorated with a huge red bow. Mom and dad glance at each other, as mystified as we children are. “Well, let's open the garage,” says Dad. Together we all lift on the handle and the garage door swings open. We stand there stunned. Every inch is filled with boxes. We move closer. There are boxes of clothes for each of us and boxes of toys and boxes of canned goods and boxes of children's books. Even at seven, I remember staring at the amazement and happiness on my family's faces and I notice my heart isn't tight anymore, but wide open.
Santa made it after all! We become exhilarated and slightly intoxicated after opening our presents. My parents have a look of pure, unexpected joy on their haggard faces. I catch a glimpse of a tear on my Dad's cheek. We troop back and forth into the house carrying armfuls of clothes and toys. I would never forget this particular Christmas. It is the beginning of a difficult childhood with a depressed and sometimes violent father. But this Christmas, when Santa truly does not forget us, gives me a hope and a belief in human kindness that cuts through my father's cynicism.
It isn't until I am a teenager that I discover what really happened; I am sitting in the kitchen as my mother prepare dinner. Somehow our conversation veers back through Christmases of long ago. Mom reveals what she eventually found out after that wondrous extravaganza. Our family's name was submitted by a neighbor to a local church and the members gathered all the boxes for us. I am dumbfounded by this generosity from total strangers. Throughout my growing-up years, my father constantly tied to make strangers our enemies. A knowing smile crosses my face. My father is not as wise as I think. I can feel the pull of that simple string on my fingers and the memory of how this thin piece of twine gave our family the greatest joy in a dark time. I will always be eternally grateful.
© 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Giving Birth: An Oregon Story (continued)
Gestation
When Dan and I returned to California, the sweet taste in our mouths of the Pacific Northwest made us come to an easy decision. We were heading back to Oregon. Dan packed his family inherited dresser, his guitars and clothes into his Chevy van. I packed my family inherited maple rocking chair, my journals, books and clothes into my Fiat station wagon and, like modern pioneers, we carvaned up the coast. This time as we drove over the border into Ashland and then on to Eugene, we knew we were coming home.
Our first autumn with its brilliant reds, oranges, golds and yellows is remembered like an artist's dream. We camped inside the van on the doorstep of a friend's house. Dan and I started looking simultaneously for an apartment and for work. The crisp sunlit days turned into cool nights. These cool nights turned into freezing winter ones. During the first pre-Thanksgiving snow fall, we had been visiting another friend teaching near Dayton. We appreciated the warmth of her living room. I now fondly remember the thirteen comforters and blankets piled on top of the sleeping bags we used in our van bedroom. I never appreciated having a home so much as the first day we walked into our duplex.
Labor
Our seventh anniversary brought a searing transformation. I had been attending graduate school, working on the father/daughter relationship in literature and in psychotherapy when my father died from an accidental house-roof fall while gutter cleaning. His death came one week after his birthday and four days after Christmas. In the middle of counseling, working to heal the tempestuous relationship I had with my father, I was devastated. I grieved passionately. I wrote in my journal. In California I visited my dad's favorite haunts. In Oregon I meditated on a McKenzie River boulder where I had once brought my nature loving dad. Over a nine month mourning period I sobbed my way to my own rebirth.
Dan was supportive during this difficult time, but he was also set adrift by my emotional volcano. He listened intently as I bubbled over from my counseling sessions. I was growing in such leaps and bounds he couldn't keep up with me while his intimacy needs were not being met. We were each becoming more involved in parallel lives. We loved each other but change was in the air.
My need for a home, a commitment and a child were coming to the fore. Dan emotionally backed away from my needs without expressing his own. We began searching for a house to buy. During this house seeking process, however, I unexpectedly discovered that Dan had been having a romantic connection with another woman on his softball team. I asked for a three month moratorium on this other relationship and we started counseling with a family therapist we knew.
We bought our home; I took over ownership when Dan moved out. What followed was a turbulent year. We lived apart and drifted into our separate lives. Dan's other relationship ended and he continued the counseling he had started earlier. I got a roommate and worked and cried full time. In my late thirties I began to mourn the loss of a daughter I might never have. The name Aspen was etched into poetry and there I thought it would remain.
Near the end of our year apart I began seeing the whole of me rather than the loss of an “us.” I was doing house repairs with my roommate, plowing up the front lawn for a vegetable/flower garden, writing, hiking and learning to thrive on my own. I thought I could now finally be friends with this man I loved. One evening we set up a meeting at the house to discuss finances and our co-parented cat, Lupe.
As we talked we began to fuse in a way we had never been able to do before. He spent the night. I panicked and felt I had committed the gravest of sins. Wasn't I over this man? Hadn't I already been hurt? Was I asking for more pain? Gradually my tears begin spinning into gold. For Dan and I, remaining in our separate living spaces, began to “date” again. And we began weekly couple-counseling sessions which over a two and a half year period brought us to the intimacy needed for a life long commitment of marriage and the promise of trying to give birth to a child.
Birth
We planned our own wedding ceremony for the third Saturday in May, 1988. It was to be a small friends and family affair in a lovely, grand backyard. We ended up inviting over a hundred guests including twenty children. Four friends called the four directions of earth, air, fire and water and we ended with the community we had created around us, speaking out their tributes and strange/humorous remembrances. We had each written our vows separately and revealed them to each other on that day. We held hands and instead of crying, laughed our way through our spoken words. But what unexpectedly touched my heart was the vow Dan made to have a raise a child with me.
It was November and we had been trying for a baby for nearly eight months. In December we left for our planned trip to Oaxaca, Mexico. One late afternoon as I was sitting at Casa Arnel's communal table, a woman I had never met who was sitting across from me said, “You're pregnant.” On some deep, unconscious level I intuited she was right.
A youthful forty-one, I was joyfully and deliciously exuberant throughout my pregnancy. The summer months brought warmth and the nesting syndrome. It also brought a visit to a Native American Sun Dance near Salem. My friend Wren and I set up a tent on the outskirts of the ceremonial fire. I breathed in the peace of the forest and meadow surroundings. That evening there was a gathering of the elders. The fire blazed gently in the middle of the circle. After introductions and shared wisdom, we were each invited to step to the fire and ask for a wished blessing. As I approached the flames, I caressed my blossoming belly and asked that this child I was carrying be a child and caretaker of the earth.
Aspen Louise was born on a September 1st Friday near midnight. My midwife, Dan, the soon-to-be Godparents were all in the hospital room with me, as I chanted my way to her birth. “It's a girl, I think,” exclaimed my husband as our precious one was lifted from my body.
When Aspen first latched onto my breast, all the years of waiting and wondering, sadness, disappointment and hurt disappeared. Only the present moment of cradling this small being remained. And it seems that moment led to the next moment and to the next and within the blink of a fairy's eye, twenty-two years passed. This daughter is now five inches taller than I am, and I sometimes wonder if she was ever really inside of me. Three days after her birth, her tiny perfect physical presence still invisibly attached to my umbilical cord, we brought her home to our cats, home to our small house, home to our garden, home to our community of loving friends, home to the life Dan and I shared, home to Eugene, Oregon, where we have now spent thirty-four blessed years.
© 2011
When Dan and I returned to California, the sweet taste in our mouths of the Pacific Northwest made us come to an easy decision. We were heading back to Oregon. Dan packed his family inherited dresser, his guitars and clothes into his Chevy van. I packed my family inherited maple rocking chair, my journals, books and clothes into my Fiat station wagon and, like modern pioneers, we carvaned up the coast. This time as we drove over the border into Ashland and then on to Eugene, we knew we were coming home.
Our first autumn with its brilliant reds, oranges, golds and yellows is remembered like an artist's dream. We camped inside the van on the doorstep of a friend's house. Dan and I started looking simultaneously for an apartment and for work. The crisp sunlit days turned into cool nights. These cool nights turned into freezing winter ones. During the first pre-Thanksgiving snow fall, we had been visiting another friend teaching near Dayton. We appreciated the warmth of her living room. I now fondly remember the thirteen comforters and blankets piled on top of the sleeping bags we used in our van bedroom. I never appreciated having a home so much as the first day we walked into our duplex.
Labor
Our seventh anniversary brought a searing transformation. I had been attending graduate school, working on the father/daughter relationship in literature and in psychotherapy when my father died from an accidental house-roof fall while gutter cleaning. His death came one week after his birthday and four days after Christmas. In the middle of counseling, working to heal the tempestuous relationship I had with my father, I was devastated. I grieved passionately. I wrote in my journal. In California I visited my dad's favorite haunts. In Oregon I meditated on a McKenzie River boulder where I had once brought my nature loving dad. Over a nine month mourning period I sobbed my way to my own rebirth.
Dan was supportive during this difficult time, but he was also set adrift by my emotional volcano. He listened intently as I bubbled over from my counseling sessions. I was growing in such leaps and bounds he couldn't keep up with me while his intimacy needs were not being met. We were each becoming more involved in parallel lives. We loved each other but change was in the air.
My need for a home, a commitment and a child were coming to the fore. Dan emotionally backed away from my needs without expressing his own. We began searching for a house to buy. During this house seeking process, however, I unexpectedly discovered that Dan had been having a romantic connection with another woman on his softball team. I asked for a three month moratorium on this other relationship and we started counseling with a family therapist we knew.
We bought our home; I took over ownership when Dan moved out. What followed was a turbulent year. We lived apart and drifted into our separate lives. Dan's other relationship ended and he continued the counseling he had started earlier. I got a roommate and worked and cried full time. In my late thirties I began to mourn the loss of a daughter I might never have. The name Aspen was etched into poetry and there I thought it would remain.
Near the end of our year apart I began seeing the whole of me rather than the loss of an “us.” I was doing house repairs with my roommate, plowing up the front lawn for a vegetable/flower garden, writing, hiking and learning to thrive on my own. I thought I could now finally be friends with this man I loved. One evening we set up a meeting at the house to discuss finances and our co-parented cat, Lupe.
As we talked we began to fuse in a way we had never been able to do before. He spent the night. I panicked and felt I had committed the gravest of sins. Wasn't I over this man? Hadn't I already been hurt? Was I asking for more pain? Gradually my tears begin spinning into gold. For Dan and I, remaining in our separate living spaces, began to “date” again. And we began weekly couple-counseling sessions which over a two and a half year period brought us to the intimacy needed for a life long commitment of marriage and the promise of trying to give birth to a child.
Birth
We planned our own wedding ceremony for the third Saturday in May, 1988. It was to be a small friends and family affair in a lovely, grand backyard. We ended up inviting over a hundred guests including twenty children. Four friends called the four directions of earth, air, fire and water and we ended with the community we had created around us, speaking out their tributes and strange/humorous remembrances. We had each written our vows separately and revealed them to each other on that day. We held hands and instead of crying, laughed our way through our spoken words. But what unexpectedly touched my heart was the vow Dan made to have a raise a child with me.
It was November and we had been trying for a baby for nearly eight months. In December we left for our planned trip to Oaxaca, Mexico. One late afternoon as I was sitting at Casa Arnel's communal table, a woman I had never met who was sitting across from me said, “You're pregnant.” On some deep, unconscious level I intuited she was right.
A youthful forty-one, I was joyfully and deliciously exuberant throughout my pregnancy. The summer months brought warmth and the nesting syndrome. It also brought a visit to a Native American Sun Dance near Salem. My friend Wren and I set up a tent on the outskirts of the ceremonial fire. I breathed in the peace of the forest and meadow surroundings. That evening there was a gathering of the elders. The fire blazed gently in the middle of the circle. After introductions and shared wisdom, we were each invited to step to the fire and ask for a wished blessing. As I approached the flames, I caressed my blossoming belly and asked that this child I was carrying be a child and caretaker of the earth.
Aspen Louise was born on a September 1st Friday near midnight. My midwife, Dan, the soon-to-be Godparents were all in the hospital room with me, as I chanted my way to her birth. “It's a girl, I think,” exclaimed my husband as our precious one was lifted from my body.
When Aspen first latched onto my breast, all the years of waiting and wondering, sadness, disappointment and hurt disappeared. Only the present moment of cradling this small being remained. And it seems that moment led to the next moment and to the next and within the blink of a fairy's eye, twenty-two years passed. This daughter is now five inches taller than I am, and I sometimes wonder if she was ever really inside of me. Three days after her birth, her tiny perfect physical presence still invisibly attached to my umbilical cord, we brought her home to our cats, home to our small house, home to our garden, home to our community of loving friends, home to the life Dan and I shared, home to Eugene, Oregon, where we have now spent thirty-four blessed years.
© 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Giving Birth: An Oregon Story
Conception
My husband Dan affectionately laughs at the notion that everything in life happens for a reason. Having been cradled in the arms of sadness while watching my railroaded dreams disappear, I have come to understand that my life has kept to its own mysterious schedule. At twenty-nine I remember sorrowing about a loveless existence, and a decade later I rode my bike, sobbing, down the streets of Eugene because I thought I would never have a child. But all the time, I was, often unwittingly, unfolding my own Oregon story.
In the spring of 1977, I was teaching at a private school in Ojai, California. The students were difficult, and I was at odds with another teacher. Then one day, a six foot three, strawberry blond, bearded fellow came striding down the hallway wearing a red plaid flannel shirt, jeans and work style boots. After one look at his kind blue eyes, I was smitten. We introduced ourselves and shook hands. The next thing I knew Dan and I were in a small room with a piano and he was playing his song about the meaningful people he had met on his life's crooked mile.
For a week we taught together and celebrated at the end with a dinner up in the Ojai hills. Our common love of literature, nature and earth based spirituality ignited a romance. Like a ready cake mix, we found our missing ingredients and became a couple. Biweekly, we ran side by side through the neighborhood California orange groves, sucking the succulent oranges while watching the sun set behind the paper thin hills. By June, it was love.
Dan had made plans for a summer job with a friend who lived in Chiloquin, Oregon. We packed simply and rode up North in his orange Chevy van. As we crossed the border into Ashland, the magic of previous visits there returned. We wandered through Lithia Park and watched Shakespeare's Tempest in the outdoor theater on a thunderous summer night. Then we made our way to Chiloquin and up a seven mile dirt road to Randy and Susan's hand-built house which bordered a national forest and an aspen grove.
Susan was pregnant with her first child and maintained the chickens, goats and garden. Randy was working in the building trades. Their homestead had an outhouse, a well, and no electricity. To take a bath, hot water was heated on the wood stove and poured into the bathtub sitting in the living room. Guitar strumming became our entertainment. We also had horseshoe playing, story and musical potlucks. That first Oregon summer in 1977, I felt like I had been reborn in the 1800s.
Chiloquin was a cowboy and Indian town. I would walk down one side-street to the co-op grocery store and then walk down the main boulevard which had a bar, a hardware store and a cafe. What enthralled me, however, was the Klamath Indian Reservation. Susan and Randy were both part Lakota, reclaiming their Native spiritual rituals. They took us for a visit to the small reservation and introduced us to Chief Edison Chiloquin and his wife Leatha.
I was honored to have Chief Chiloquin shaking my hand against a backdrop of rawhide teepees, a wooden trellised outdoor dining room bordered by a rushing creek. We feasted on salmon and fry bread. Sitting around the fire, we listened to tribal history. When the federal government came to buy up the Klamath land, Edison refused to sell. He wanted a traditional village site as a legacy for the youngsters of the tribe. Camping on this piece of land we now sat upon, Chief Chiloquin lit a daily fire. He refused to move. Finally through years of prayer, an act of Congress gave Edison and the tribe these 200 acres. Hearing the evening echo of the steady drum beat amongst the trees, we entered their sweat lodge full of admiration and reverence for this tribe who was trying so desperately and deliberately to maintain their forgotten way of life.
Known as the “teachers,” Dan and I spent the majority of our summer in and around Chiloquin. Though I loved the herb and mushroom searches and the first stirrings of wanting my own child while meditating under a grove of aspen trees, my heart wasn't sure if back-to-the-land living was what I wanted. Dan had a friend in Eugene, so we made a journey north.
Eugene's collegiate, cultural atmosphere breathed energy into my literature-loving brain. We walked the quaint neighborhoods finding wood-shingled houses built in the 40s and lush vegetable/flower gardens. The wide bike paths along the Willamette River and the abundance of juicy blackberries overwhelmed me. I felt a community connection I hadn't found down in southern Oregon. On our return to Chiloquin, we detoured to the coast highway and drove towards Port Orford. I had grown up loving the warmth and spaciousness of California beaches, but the Oregon coast's natural ruggedness spoke to my soul, seeping into my home seeking consciousness.
Dan drove us by the farmhouse he had spent a winter in. With his German Shepard Louise, he had taken up an offer to rent it for that season. He fondly remembered his days of meditation, yoga, pure vegetarian cooking and the Faulknerian characters he met in that stretch of country. Parking on the ocean's edge with a view of these giant towered rock formations in the ocean, I felt the sunlight kiss my face and watched the birds fly quietly overhead. I was in paradise. As we walked up the sandy cliff to the van, a strange visionary scene appeared. I opened the driver's side van door and before I could scoot inside, a slender, girl with reddish blond hair and a mid-calf length dress, got into the van ahead of me. My heart told me this was my future daughter and her name would be Aspen. Little did I know then that Aspen Louise would indeed be born, but it would take fourteen more years.
Our Chiloquin summer ended with a clogged well, too little work, frazzled nerves and strained relations. Surprisingly, our friendship endured with Randy and Susan. Susan would later remarry, to a man named Mark, and they would become our daughter's Godparents. But this Oregon story is slowly rolling along.
To Be Continued...
(c)2011
My husband Dan affectionately laughs at the notion that everything in life happens for a reason. Having been cradled in the arms of sadness while watching my railroaded dreams disappear, I have come to understand that my life has kept to its own mysterious schedule. At twenty-nine I remember sorrowing about a loveless existence, and a decade later I rode my bike, sobbing, down the streets of Eugene because I thought I would never have a child. But all the time, I was, often unwittingly, unfolding my own Oregon story.
In the spring of 1977, I was teaching at a private school in Ojai, California. The students were difficult, and I was at odds with another teacher. Then one day, a six foot three, strawberry blond, bearded fellow came striding down the hallway wearing a red plaid flannel shirt, jeans and work style boots. After one look at his kind blue eyes, I was smitten. We introduced ourselves and shook hands. The next thing I knew Dan and I were in a small room with a piano and he was playing his song about the meaningful people he had met on his life's crooked mile.
For a week we taught together and celebrated at the end with a dinner up in the Ojai hills. Our common love of literature, nature and earth based spirituality ignited a romance. Like a ready cake mix, we found our missing ingredients and became a couple. Biweekly, we ran side by side through the neighborhood California orange groves, sucking the succulent oranges while watching the sun set behind the paper thin hills. By June, it was love.
Dan had made plans for a summer job with a friend who lived in Chiloquin, Oregon. We packed simply and rode up North in his orange Chevy van. As we crossed the border into Ashland, the magic of previous visits there returned. We wandered through Lithia Park and watched Shakespeare's Tempest in the outdoor theater on a thunderous summer night. Then we made our way to Chiloquin and up a seven mile dirt road to Randy and Susan's hand-built house which bordered a national forest and an aspen grove.
Susan was pregnant with her first child and maintained the chickens, goats and garden. Randy was working in the building trades. Their homestead had an outhouse, a well, and no electricity. To take a bath, hot water was heated on the wood stove and poured into the bathtub sitting in the living room. Guitar strumming became our entertainment. We also had horseshoe playing, story and musical potlucks. That first Oregon summer in 1977, I felt like I had been reborn in the 1800s.
Chiloquin was a cowboy and Indian town. I would walk down one side-street to the co-op grocery store and then walk down the main boulevard which had a bar, a hardware store and a cafe. What enthralled me, however, was the Klamath Indian Reservation. Susan and Randy were both part Lakota, reclaiming their Native spiritual rituals. They took us for a visit to the small reservation and introduced us to Chief Edison Chiloquin and his wife Leatha.
I was honored to have Chief Chiloquin shaking my hand against a backdrop of rawhide teepees, a wooden trellised outdoor dining room bordered by a rushing creek. We feasted on salmon and fry bread. Sitting around the fire, we listened to tribal history. When the federal government came to buy up the Klamath land, Edison refused to sell. He wanted a traditional village site as a legacy for the youngsters of the tribe. Camping on this piece of land we now sat upon, Chief Chiloquin lit a daily fire. He refused to move. Finally through years of prayer, an act of Congress gave Edison and the tribe these 200 acres. Hearing the evening echo of the steady drum beat amongst the trees, we entered their sweat lodge full of admiration and reverence for this tribe who was trying so desperately and deliberately to maintain their forgotten way of life.
Known as the “teachers,” Dan and I spent the majority of our summer in and around Chiloquin. Though I loved the herb and mushroom searches and the first stirrings of wanting my own child while meditating under a grove of aspen trees, my heart wasn't sure if back-to-the-land living was what I wanted. Dan had a friend in Eugene, so we made a journey north.
Eugene's collegiate, cultural atmosphere breathed energy into my literature-loving brain. We walked the quaint neighborhoods finding wood-shingled houses built in the 40s and lush vegetable/flower gardens. The wide bike paths along the Willamette River and the abundance of juicy blackberries overwhelmed me. I felt a community connection I hadn't found down in southern Oregon. On our return to Chiloquin, we detoured to the coast highway and drove towards Port Orford. I had grown up loving the warmth and spaciousness of California beaches, but the Oregon coast's natural ruggedness spoke to my soul, seeping into my home seeking consciousness.
Dan drove us by the farmhouse he had spent a winter in. With his German Shepard Louise, he had taken up an offer to rent it for that season. He fondly remembered his days of meditation, yoga, pure vegetarian cooking and the Faulknerian characters he met in that stretch of country. Parking on the ocean's edge with a view of these giant towered rock formations in the ocean, I felt the sunlight kiss my face and watched the birds fly quietly overhead. I was in paradise. As we walked up the sandy cliff to the van, a strange visionary scene appeared. I opened the driver's side van door and before I could scoot inside, a slender, girl with reddish blond hair and a mid-calf length dress, got into the van ahead of me. My heart told me this was my future daughter and her name would be Aspen. Little did I know then that Aspen Louise would indeed be born, but it would take fourteen more years.
Our Chiloquin summer ended with a clogged well, too little work, frazzled nerves and strained relations. Surprisingly, our friendship endured with Randy and Susan. Susan would later remarry, to a man named Mark, and they would become our daughter's Godparents. But this Oregon story is slowly rolling along.
To Be Continued...
(c)2011
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