"I do love this house!
Look the daisies in the back yard are all in bloom!" Rodney and I were
preparing ourselves to leave.
"You have worked awfully
hard to get everything this nice," he told me and I knew how true that
was.
"There’s all the
refinishing furniture you did for a two-story house and that was a job.
You sewed all those drapes of material from a fire sale. Even those
chairs you upholstered are very nice." Rodney was testing my resolve to
move.
"I know." I agreed with
him. I shrugged my shoulders even as I remembered finding the dull grey
fabric in a fire sale. After adding bleach to it the most beautiful gold
came forth. Because the crepe like material hung so beautifully and
since it was ten cents a yard I had enough to hang drapes from floor to
ceiling for a dramatic effect in our living room.
"Fabric, furniture,
things can be replaced. We have time. I’m sure it is necessary to do
what has to be done for our baby."
Gradually, as carefully
as we had begun to put plans and our lives together in this town so
things were unwound as easily as anyone could unwind a ball of yarn
simply by dropping it and watching it roll.
The hours spent with new
friends would never be lost in our hearts and minds. The dancing, the
laughter and the good times on the big old back porch was a memory
sealed forever in our being. Besides, if boards could talk the floor
might tell its own story of happy people enjoying life for only just one
evening. From time to time over the years in the future, what is called
the pipeline of friends, one story after another came to me.
The friend whose husband
owned an equipment company made me a small pin cushion I always
cherished. It was a vividly bright color of burnt red and only someone
with Native American blood would truly appreciate it’s design. There
were two small stuffed squares sewn at one corner to a length of ribbon
so it could be thrown over a hook. I saved it and kept the ornament
tucked away in a secure place. On the day and hour she died it was
raining in our part of the world. One of the children must have filched
the pin cushion from its hiding place and dropped it in the walk way
which went around the side of our house. It was soaked through and
through and I picked the bright object up from the dark murky puddle
into which it fell. I didn’t know of her death at the time but dried it
off while I was thinking of my friend from so long ago. Imagine how I
felt when I realized she was gone and at the same time I had found her
memory gift to me.
This was to happen so far
in the future. At the present the decision was made, for sure, we would
be moving on to what we believed would be a solution to the problem with
our child. If I could walk away from the plains of the Osage, fragrant
meadows, spacious uncluttered grounds and magnificent skies surely I
would be able to leave this place.
"Will you watch Rhonda
for a bit? I want to drive out to the country to say good-bye to some of
our friends.
"Will do. Do you want me
to go with you?" Rodney offered.
I knew his introvert self
was being courteous and was sure he really didn’t want to go, so I told
him I would go alone.
One by one, I visited the
families I had grown to love in that short time. We said our good-byes
and it was as if we knew this was not the ending of our acquaintance but
was a separation only for the time being. Over the years we were
destined to see each other for brief visits at the huge conventions all
about the country. And though these were to be fleeting it was a way to
pick up on unknown happenings in each of our lives.
As Al-Anon and AA speak
of a God thing it was is as if we were fated to have our lives meshed
together forever and so we parted with smiles, hugs, and sweet sorrow,
to use the phrase another writer has already penned.
Someone might
suspiciously asked if the author is trying to proselytize a certain
religion. Not so, because every congregation of the Christian faiths are
different. What one accomplishes in one facet another might totally fail
but excel in some other phase of service. In other words the Norman
congregation, somewhere in the early establishment of their make-up
already had the foundation for success as far as building close
relationships. Each Christian group is as different as the original
congregations in Corinth and early day Christian association. Our moving
about from town to town taught us that. The trick is to find the
strengths and weakness of a society and abide with those strengths
overlooking the weakness or better yet, working to help overcome the
weaknesses.