Let me learn from nature. Let me hear her song. Let me hum in harmony with her and let me walk in step to the rhythm of my own bones.
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Previously published August 25, 2010 in Western Nebraska Observer and Gering Citizen
Saturday, August 21, 2010.
We get out of the pickup and immediately comment on the wind.
“It probably blows here every day of the year,” my husband Tim says.
He and daughter Jamie and I look to the west, past the herd of grazing buffalo, where we see the Rockies shrouded in a grayish purple haze. The southern horizon is filled with wind turbines. To the east, there is prairie grass next to a field being plowed by a man on a John Deere tractor. We look northeast, towards home. Then we look at each other and laugh.
“Here we are, at the highest point in Nebraska, and it looks as flat as every place else in this part of the country.” We are all thinking it, but Tim is the one who says it.
Panorama Point, a little over twenty miles southwest of Bushnell, is 5424 feet above sea level. Since we have never been to this landmark, or to the tri-state corner marker, we decide to take a Saturday afternoon road trip and take in the sites.
We drive to Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, head south, and find the corner marker where Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado touch edges. The original marker was erected by Oliver N. Chaffee 141 years ago, on August 17, 1869. The highest point in Nebraska, about a mile and a half northeast of the three-state corner, is just barely visible from here.
Less than fifteen minutes later, we stand at 5424 feet. Tim and Jamie and I think it is ironic. It seems more appropriate for the highest point to be in the Wildcat Hills or in the Pine Ridge country in northwestern Nebraska. This is unexpected. Only the mountains in the distance give a clue that we’re on a bit of a rise.
Sometimes internal and external landscapes are very much alike. I think back on my week and am reminded that life’s higher elevations are not always where you expect them.
On Monday, I began teaching this year’s senior class, the class of 2011. That evening, Tim and I attended Esther Benson’s country two-step lesson. I joined my fellow “Panhandlers” in our bi-monthly writers group on Tuesday. I commuted to Gering with Jamie every day of the week. We spent two evenings with daughter Jess and her fiancé, who drove up from Denver. I visited with my mom by phone. I corresponded with friends. When I review the week, I find it difficult to label one of these events as more “elevated” than the others. They are all high points.
And just this morning, around 10:00, our friend Ben called. “Deb, we’re at an auction. There are a bunch of books here.” He knows that Jamie is renovating our horse barn and plans to open a used bookstore in Bushnell next summer.
I closed my cell phone, walked to the dining room and relayed the message. “Shall we go?” I asked.
Ten minutes later, we were in the pickup and on our way to Scottsbluff. Fifteen minutes after we arrived in Scottsbluff, the auctioneers got to the books. We got the bid on twelve of the fourteen boxes. The other half of the fun came when we got home and sorted through the books. The unexpected trip was worth it. This was definitely one of the high points in the week.
But then I think of last night, Friday. Relay for Life was held in Kimball and I kicked off the event with a couple of songs I had written about my cancer journey. I then joined the survivors for a walk around the track. The experience was moving, and even more so when Tim and Jamie joined me for the caregiver lap. The theme of the event had to do with birthdays, and as we made that second lap, I thought of my approaching birthdays. In September, I’ll mark 51 years of a good life. In October, I will be a four-year cancer survivor.
For the entire lap, I felt like running, felt like throwing my head back and shouting, felt like raising my hands in triumph and in praise. I felt like I was on top of the world.
I’ve decided it’s all about perspective. Every place you stand, feet planted on solid ground, you can turn a degree or a day at a time and make the circle, noting the blessings. Somewhere in that 360 degrees or 365 days you will see buffalo grazing, wind turbines spinning, purple mountains, earth being turned, survivors circling on a hamster’s wheel of hope. You may stand in three places at once, but you will always find the road home. You will turn pages in life’s book, read the same words shuffled into new sentences, and see signs that remind you to take a second look. Wherever you stand, whether it is at sea level or at 5424 feet, you are exactly where you are meant to be at that point in time—Panorama Point.
Mile Marker 436 by Deb Carpenter-Nolting
Digital Story of Mile Marker 436
We measure life’s journeys by mile markers: new years, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and other significant events. Sometimes these miles are marked by the journeys themselves: traversing new trails, visiting vast expanses, following an inner compass which leads us outside our normal bounds, exploring territories beyond the sea’s horizon, finding our way to new adventures, starting a new job, taking a second trip down the aisle, discovering that we can indeed take “home” with us wherever we go.
Sometimes we leave pieces of ourselves at the side of the road, and sometimes we barely escape with our lives. Mile Marker 436 is that place in the road. On January 3, 2009, someone else’s child lost control on the ice, crossed the interstate median, struck the driver’s side of my daughter’s car, forcing its precious cargo—both of my girls—across four lanes of traffic and into the ditch a few miles out of Omaha, Nebraska.
My youngest daughter came to first. She saw her sister, head to one side, unconscious and not moving. Her diary account says, “I began to scream her name into the frigid air seeping through the lifeless windows.” But she also had the presence of mind to take her sister’s pulse and check her breathing. Her sister was alive.
Help arrived quickly, and we were fortunate that both of our girls received the best of care at Creighton University Medical Center. My oldest suffered a lacerated liver and had to be cautious for a few months until this vital organ was completely healed. My youngest endured major bruising and still has a great fear of icy roads.
Once they were safe again, I let out the breath I had been holding. My heart started beating again. I placed this journey on the timeline with their birthdays and school programs and proms and graduations, with sunrises and sunsets, and the rhythm of their seasons. This journey found its place among their road-trips, where I still rely on their guardian angels to watch over them and where, with my innate fetal monitor, I mark the miles by listening for their breathing and by placing my finger on the pulse of their path, counting heartbeats and blessings.
A Time to Harvest, A Time to Plant
By Deb Carpenter-Nolting
Previously published in the Gering Citizen November 25, 2009 and the Western Nebraska Observer November 24, 2010
He would have been seventy-seven on Thanksgiving Day of this year.
Dad grew up in the country, and his classroom was the world around him, where he could observe the animals and the seasons and allow his curiosity to channel his learning.
The life he chose was not an easy one, but he couldn’t be contained indoors. Farming and ranching were in his blood. He and his dad and brothers fed cattle in the harsh Nebraska winters and worked them in the spring and summer. In the 1940s, many cattlemen sprayed their herds with DDT to prevent flies and mosquitos from bothering them. My uncle said sometimes they would get more DDT on themselves than they would on the cattle.
Dad used herbicides and pesticides throughout his life, because that was the prescribed method for improving crop yields and weight gain in market cattle. I have a strong hunch these chemicals are to blame for his bone marrow disorder, which progressed to leukemia, and robbed him of a few more harvests and fall sales.
He managed, however, to pack a lot of life into the seventy-six years he did live. He did this by working hard, taking time off to fish now and then, relishing a good joke or a good story, and planning his next adventure.
When he was diagnosed with leukemia and was told he only had a few months to live, he bought a pontoon boat. He had always wanted one, and he figured it would give his friends and family an opportunity to spend time with him enjoying one of his favorite activities.
He also had other ways of letting people know he was celebrating his life and was preparing for his final harvest. On Tim’s and my first visit home after we found out Dad’s prognosis, he brought out a bottle of Cuervo Gold. “For what I paid for it, there should have been a worm in the bottom,” he laughed, holding it up for us to see the worm’s absence.
“I got this over thirty years ago, when we were visiting Uncle Warren in San Diego. We drove over into Mexico, and I bought this as a souvenir. I decided to open it the other day when Willard was here.” Uncle Willard is Dad’s and Warren’s older brother.
Dad said it tasted a little bit like kerosene, but he poured each of us a small amount anyway. We raised our glasses, and I had a moment of panic. Should I make a toast? To health? Happiness? Life?
“To misery,” Dad said, and smiled. He recounted the story of someone he’d served with in the military who always gave that particular toast. I can’t remember the details, but it’s too late to ask; the storyteller is gone.
Dad wasn’t much of a drinker, so after sharing a few sips of tequila and his story with a few people, he wasn’t interested in drinking any more of it. He liked to play cards, though, so after pouring our tequila, we sat down to play a hand. He was a master at cards, but never gambled with them. He always said farming was the biggest gamble you could take.
Dad had raised a number of crops during his lifetime but had never planted corn. That summer, he decided to put corn in some of the bottom ground near the creek. The rains came at just the right time, and the corn was beautiful. When he felt up to it, Dad would take a drive to the field at the far end of the place. Uncle Willard had told him how to estimate the number of bushels per acre, so on one of our visits, he and Tim walked down one row, counting ears. Many stalks had double ears, and Dad was proud that his dryland field was so productive.
When Dad was no longer able to spend much time outdoors, he brought the crops in the house. We walked in one weekend and saw several piles of corn. Mom explained that he wanted to see how much weight and volume was lost as the kernels dried.
After he was gone, Tim and Mom and I drove to church one Sunday and Tim found an ear of dried corn under the seat of Mom and Dad’s car. I kept it—a reminder of my father’s indomitable hope and spirit.
His last crop was planted in aluminum pie pans that he kept by his hospital bed in the living room. His “fields” were moistened paper towels with seeds scattered on top. He watched the wheat sprout and he calculated the percentage of seeds that germinated. The green shoots were vibrant and strong—a bittersweet reminder of the cycle from seed to sprout to harvest.
Near the end he told Tim, “I wanted to make it through one more fishing season. Then I thought I could make it through the corn harvest. After I did that, I thought I could make it to Thanksgiving. If I made it through Thanksgiving, maybe I could make it to Christmas. Now I’m hoping I’ll live long enough to do some more fishing.”
He didn’t make it to fish on the waters in this world. He died March 27th, 2009, one day before my mom’s birthday. This past summer was my first summer without him. He missed the Wellnitz Pumpkin Invitational and this year’s harvest. He will miss Thanksgiving, and he will miss his birthday. And we will miss him.
This Thanksgiving, we’ll gather at the ranch and we’ll share a few stories about Dad. I’ll add an ear of his field corn to the centerpiece. We will eat turkey, cranberry salad, rolls, sweet potatoes and green bean casserole. We’ll top it all off with pie made from the meat of someone’s Great Pumpkin Invitational entry. We’ll play a few cards. We’ll visit the cemetery. Some of us will sing Happy Birthday and raise a toast to him with Cuervo Gold. He would have been seventy-seven years old on this day of Thanksgiving.
Music: The Tie that Binds
By Deb Carpenter-Nolting
Previously published in the Gering Citizen August 26, 2009
“Music has always been important to our family,” my aunt said after we loaded Grandma’s organ into our pickup and prepared to drive back to Nebraska from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. She added, “Instead of having a puppy or kitty, your grandma played the organ. It was her comfort.”
Music has always been important to the family. Many of the aunts and uncles and cousins could play some type of instrument and everyone sang and enjoyed listening to music. Grandma relished all kinds of music. I remember dropping by for visits and watching her hustle over to the large console to turn down Tom Jones’ “She’s a Lady” or Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” (Grandma’s name was Caroline, so she especially liked this tune). I also remember lying on the living room floor, eye level with Grandma’s feet, watching her work the pedals and listening to the low tones that harmonized with the music from upper keyboards.
Grandma’s organ was purchased in the fall of 1960 from Renzelman and Cassells House of Music at 1907 Broadway in Scottsbluff. The 212-pound beautiful walnut-finished double rank electric Wurlitzer barely fit in the back of our Toyota Tacoma with the topper on. Aunt Alma Jean and Tim and I removed the front legs from the organ, scooted it across the carpet, then Tim hauled while I pushed it up the steps from the basement to the garage, where we lifted it onto a sheet of siding and inched it up into the back of the pickup. We had measured to make sure it would fit, but we didn’t take into account the added ½” from the makeshift ramp, so Aunt Alma Jean and I balanced it on the edge of the tailgate while Tim crawled in and unclamped the topper so we could scoot it in the rest of the way.
Our work was only half done. After Tim and I drove the 4 ½ hours home again, we prepared ourselves to unload the organ. As usual, Tim had a plan. “We’ll back up to the walkway and get some boards so we can ease it down a ramp and slide it along the boards to the door. Then we’ll lift it up the steps, and slide it, on rugs, across the floor to its place in the living room.
“Will it fit through the doors?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Tim said. “No problem.”
Tim got the plywood in place for the ramp from the end-gate to the walk-way and also set down some boards for a runway.
We got all 212 pounds of organ (minus 4 pounds for the removed legs) to the door without a hitch. Tim looked at the front entrance, looked at the stairs, looked at the doorway at the top of the stairs, and studied the organ sitting outside.
“Maybe I’d better take off the doors,” he said.
“Good idea,” I agreed. Better to remove them now than chance scratching the finish or getting Grandma’s organ stuck in the doorway, halfway up the stairs.
It took a few minutes for Tim to pop the doors off their hinges and set them in the kitchen. This gave me a chance to catch my breath before lifting and pushing up the stairs. We managed to get 208 pounds of unscratched walnut finished music box through the doors, up the steps, and across the living room floor. Tim re-attached the legs and plugged in the Wurlitzer.
While Tim put the doors back on, I turned on the organ. I play guitar, and have only a rudimentary knowledge of the keyboard, but am determined to learn to play my grandma’s treasure, so I couldn’t wait to sit down and listen to tones I hadn’t heard for years. I thought about my grandma and her legacy of music.
I also thought of my dad, who liked to whistle and sing harmony. I thought of the time Dad and Uncle Willard and my sister Julie and I got together to practice some quartet music. Dad and Uncle Willard were both hearing impaired. My dad had a hearing aid, but Uncle Willard didn’t, so they passed my Dad’s hearing aid back and forth while we practiced so they could take turns hearing the notes. I also thought of my Uncle Willard’s other musical abilities. He plays guitar and piano by ear and decided to pick up the violin in his mid-70s and teach himself to play. I thought of Uncle Warren, who thought if Willard could learn to play the violin, he could, too. I thought of my Aunt Alma Jean, who plays both piano and organ and sings in the choir and who has a heart big enough to pass my grandma’s Wurlitzer on for the next generation to enjoy.
Yes, music has always been important to our family. We enjoy music. When I was in elementary school, my siblings and I used to stand on the marble fireplace hearth in the living room, basking in the glow of the yard light that reflected off the mirror, creating a spotlight for our “stage.” I remember singing Annette Funicello’s song “The Moon.” My other big hits were Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
My grandma is not the only one who took comfort in music. My guitar got me through my awkward and sometimes awful high school days. I cradled it, wrote songs with it, and sang various troubles away. And during some unhappy moments of my adult life, I also turned to my guitar for consolation.
My guitar now stands next to my grandmother’s organ. After I turned on the Wurlitzer for the first time, I sat down and waited for the old vacuum tube sound system inside the organ to warm up, then rested my fingers on the keys. I picked out the tune to “Blest Be the Tie that Binds” and thought how music is a blessing, a legacy of sustained chords and grace notes that are held by one generation until the next can carry the tune.
One Man’s Service
By Deb Carpenter-Nolting
Previously published in the Western Nebraska Observer November 11, 2009 and 2010
Dad joined ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) in college, and after college, he and my mom and their newborn baby, my older sister Ruth Ann, lived in a small trailer park at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. One night there were flood warnings, and they were concerned, because their camper-trailer was parked near the “Y” of a drainage ditch. Dad told Mom, “When the water reaches the top of the ditch, we’ll hook the trailer to the pickup and drive to higher ground.”
They saw the water rise, and prepared to leave, but the water rose more quickly than they had anticipated, so that when they stepped out of the trailer, they were up to their knees in a swift-moving current. My dad, fearful that they might come back and find that the trailer had been swept away, grabbed his most valuable possession. He carried his gun out to the pickup. My mom carried my sister. Mom struggled through the water, lost her balance, and then lost a shoe as the water’s pressure pulled it off her foot and carried it away. As Dad told us this story, he shook his head and sheepishly added, “I should have helped Mom with Ruth Ann. They were a lot more important than any gun.”
But they made it to the pickup and out of the trailer park, then drove to the house of Dad’s superior officer. Dad asked the colonel if Mom and Ruth Ann could seek shelter there. The colonel insisted that Dad, Mom, and Ruth Ann spend the night at his home. He showed them to their room upstairs. The next morning, Dad discovered the colonel and his wife had spent the night on the living room floor. Dad felt terrible, but eventually came to see the generosity of the gift and he grew to appreciate true leadership in its most humble form.
During his two years in the army, Dad served a tour of duty in Korea, and had to leave behind those most precious to him– his wife and his baby. My mom and sister lived with my grandmother in Fort Collins, Colorado, and my sister grew into a toddler without the benefit of developing a relationship with her daddy during those fifteen months he was away.
As a first lieutenant in the artillery division, Dad was often subjected to loud gunfire during a time when soldiers had no gear for hearing protection. Dad lived the rest of his life with a constant ringing in his ears, and slept with the TV or radio on to drown out the inner noise. As he grew older, it became more and more difficult for him to hear. The damaged nerves in one ear shattered after he bumped his head on the roof of his cattle truck, and he lost hearing in that ear completely. He eventually lost about 90% of his hearing in his “good” ear and sometimes had difficulty catching conversations even with a hearing aid.
He suffered other hardships in Korea, but chose to share only the funnier aspects. Conditions in Korea were fairly primitive for the guys. They bunked in tents, and the winters were severely cold. One of the men slept in a mummy sleeping bag to keep warm. He pulled the strings tight, leaving a small hole for breathing, and kept his hand near his face so he could loosen the cord the next morning. Once he woke to find a young Korean boy slipping the watch off his wrist. By the time he raised the alarm, he was rolling around trying to get out of his sleeping bag and the boy was gone. It was only recently I learned that Dad dug a bunker and began sleeping underground to escape the cold. That explained why he always carried coats, coveralls, and multiple stocking caps in his pickup on the ranch and kept the living room toasty warm.
We picked up other nuggets of military life from stories shared, and gleaned information while watching slides on our living room wall from a box marked “Korea,” where we were able to see the landscape and the people through Dad’s eyes. In the midst of his slides were a few snapshots of a beautiful woman. “Rita Moreno,” Dad told us. “She came over to entertain the troops.” We oohed and aahed over the famous actress/singer.
“She and Billy Graham were the only celebrities to visit,” Dad added.
“So where are the pictures of Billy Graham?” I asked the last time he showed his slides. We all laughed.
“He was too far away for me to get any good pictures,” Dad quickly retorted, and chuckled with us.
Dad appreciated the fact that Billy Graham (and Rita Moreno) came overseas to give the troops encouragement. My father had a strong faith, but he was not necessarily a church-going man. In one of his conversations with my husband, Dad told Tim that he didn’t believe that God resided in a fancy church building. Dad was always closest to God out in Nature or going about his daily work. He told Tim that when he was in the service, come Sunday morning he and fellow soldiers would set up a make-shift “church” in a Quonset. The wooden benches for seating and the sheet of plywood for an altar didn’t deter them from their worship. “You could feel the Spirit’s presence there,” Dad said.
Dad served his country without complaint, without regret. He never expressed anger about his loss of hearing or about being away from his young family. He managed, as usual, to see the half-full glass in front of him and make the most of whatever life dealt him. The army gave him the chance to test himself, and he came away with some valuable life lessons. He gave a piece of himself for his country, and his country gave him what it could in return. He knew others had given up much more, and he considered his own sacrifices small for the greater good of the country. He served willingly so that his children could live freely.
During the month of November, the “thanksgiving” month, I would like to voice my gratitude for the sacrifices made for this country by my Dad and by men and women like him. I am also thankful for the service of others: for those who lead with humility; for those who soldier on with one shoe; for those who learn to walk while their daddy or mommy is away. I recognize that time is often lost or stolen, but am thankful for the eyes behind the camera and the ears of the listening heart, for warmth, and for the Spirit that works within us all.
By Deb Carpenter-Nolting
Previously published by The Gering Citizen January 20, 2010.
I was at the computer Thursday evening when the phone rang, so Tim answered it. When there was a long silence after his “Hello,” I knew it probably wasn’t one of our children on the other end of the line. I highly doubted it was a customer asking about handyman work, either. The lack of response on Tim’s part and his increased momentum in pacing the floor gave me a strong clue as to what kind of a call it might be. Even though we are on the “DO NOT CALL” list, a telemarketer must have managed to get through.
“I’m not interested, thank you,” Tim said.
I heard another full minute of silence.
“I’m not interested, so there’s no sense in even starting it,” Tim tried once again.
This time, the sales pitch was shorter but evidently more forceful.
This time, Tim’s response was enunciated slowly and loudly, just in case the telemarketer hadn’t understood him the first two times.
“NO— THANK— YOU—-. I’M— NOT— INTERESTED.”
The caller didn’t have much time to continue before Tim interrupted. “No, we do not carry a balance on our credit card, and we do not need insurance. We’re covered if I’m disabled. That’s why I said, ‘No thank you.’”
Tim’s a very patient man, and a very polite one, but he was beginning to get irritated with the caller. I’m not as patient, and probably not as polite. I usually hang up after my first “No thank you.”
Years ago, when telemarketing was a fairly new concept, people were more apt to listen to the spiel, chat with the voice on the other end, and become convinced to buy whatever the telemarketer was selling.
My dad figured out in a hurry how to handle these calls. One telemarketer was trying to sell herbicide spray to farmers and ranchers throughout the Midwest.
“Hello. Is this Jim?”
“Yes, this is Jim,” my dad replied, trying to place the voice of someone who apparently knew him on a first name basis.
“My name is Bob, and I’m with a company that manufactures herbicide spray. We’d like to send you a gallon of herbicide spray concentrate.”
“Well, that’s nice of you. Thank you,” my dad replied.
“You can send a check on receipt…” Bob continued.
“Oh, you didn’t say anything about me having to pay for it,” my dad innocently responded. “I thought maybe your company is testing it and you’d send it to me for free.”
“Sorry, Jim. This is a tested product, very effective. We’d like you to use it and see just how effective it is, so we’re making it easy for you. We’ll send it out to you, and if you don’t like it, you can send back the remaining portion and we’ll pay shipping.”
“Hmm,” said Dad.
Bob the telemarketer hurriedly added, “We’ll throw in a free 50-foot extension cord with the gallon of spray.”
Dad’s voice brightened. “Is it a heavy duty extension cord?”
“You bet—just the thing to use out in the barn.”
“So you’ll send a gallon of spray concentrate and a 50-foot extension cord, and if I don’t want to keep the spray I can ship it back to you at your expense—is that correct?”
“Yes, Jim, that’s right.”
“What about the extension cord—do I have to send it back, too?”
“No, Jim, that’s yours to keep just for trying the spray.”
“What if I don’t even try the spray? Can I still keep the extension cord?”
“Sure,” Bob prattled.
“That sounds like a pretty good deal.”
“You bet it is. What’s your shipping address, Jim?”
“Maybe you can answer a couple of questions before I give you my address, Bob.”
“I’ll do my best, Jim.”
All during their conversation, my dad’s mind had been working. Now it was time to put some things to the test. “I already have a 50-foot extension cord, but I could use a good extension cord that’s 100-foot long. If I order two gallons of spray, would you send me a 100-foot extension cord?”
Bob was probably already counting the future spray sales. “I’m sure we could arrange that, Jim.”
“I really don’t need the spray, though,” my dad went on, “so I’ll be sending it back. You’re sure I can keep the 100-foot extension cord?”
Now the telemarketer was most likely watching those imagined future sales plummeting, but he kept his cool and answered my dad in the prepared sales patter. “Yes, Jim, even if you send back two gallons of spray, you can keep the cord.”
“Sure seems like a waste of money to ship the two gallons out and then have to pay for them to be shipped back,” my dad commented. “You’d save a bunch of money if you just sent me the 100-foot extension cord and didn’t go to the trouble of sending the spray.”
There was nothing on his telephone sales crib sheet that mentioned this eventuality, so the telemarketer was having to ad lib. His once friendly voice now had a sharper edge. “Well, Jim, I don’t think we could do that.”
“I guess that’s a bit greedy on my part,” Dad acknowledged. “How about just sending me the shorter cord?”
By now, the telemarketer could see that his time had been wasted and that he was not going to make a commission on this sale. His voice lost its once-pleasant tone.
“I’ll tell you what, Jim. I’ll send you the 100-foot extension cord and you can take it out to the barn and YOU CAN HANG YOURSELF WITH IT!” Click.
My dad sat looking at the receiver in his hand that was now buzzing with a loud dial tone. Mock indignation crossed his face as he told my mom, “He hung up on me!”
Dad never did get his extension cord from the spray manufacturer. He did, however, get a great story—at the telemarketer’s expense.
It’s Got to Be Here… Somewhere
By Deb Carpenter-Nolting
Previously published in the Gering Citizen October 28, 2009
“Jessie, stop jumping off the foot-rest,” I reprimanded my two-year-old redhead.
“No, Ruthie, it’s okay. Let her jump.”
My grandma, who had never let us leap from furniture in her house when we were kids, didn’t mind any longer. She was hungry for company– even the company of two pre-school hoydens.
I tried not to mind that she had called me Ruthie, my sister’s name. She didn’t do it very often, even on her worst days, but it made me sad when she did. The woman I would have chosen to remember was the grandma who slipped me a clean glass to drink out of when all of my friends were sharing one plastic cup. She was the grandma who made the best cinnamon rolls and the warmest, tastiest bread. My grandma was the one who took us along the creek bottoms to gather lambs quarters for supper and pick chokecherries for jelly. She is the grandma who bribed us to memorize bible verses. The bible she received from her pastor on her wedding day, the bible that has markings and notes in every imaginable color of ink, the bible whose spine is reinforced with duct tape, is now in my keeping. She had inscribed on the inside that it was to be mine. I treasure it, just as I treasure my memories of her, including the sad ones.
“Great Flessner, where’s the baby we played with last time we were here?” my daughter Jamie wanted to know.
“Oh, it’s got to be here… somewhere,” my grandma responded, getting up from the couch to look. She found the sleeping doll behind the couch pillow and tossed it to the girls, laughing her toothless hearty chuckle that automatically leapt to her eyes.
Grandma and I sat and watched the girls play. She talked of younger days, days fresher to her mind than yesterday; she spoke of her sisters, jealousies, old boyfriends, the grandpa I never knew, and dreams…
Sometimes her dreams were more real than her waking hours. Perhaps they always had been. I remember hearing stories of her dream premonitions– when she dreamed of a wedding, one of the couple would soon be in a coffin; when my mother and father became engaged, she already knew, because that very night Grandma had dreamed that my mother was kidnapped. She dreamed of being lost and alone or that she had argued with my mom, then she would bear a grudge for a week, with Mom having no idea what she’d done to incur Grandma’s anger.
Sometimes Grandma spoke of her loss of memory. “It’s so awful, never being able to find things,” she would say, looking out the window and letting the tears roll down her cheeks. “Debbie, it’s no fun to be old.”
Her cupboards reflected her state of mind. I went to get something for her or put a thing away– I don’t remember– and the space was full of shoes with no mates, egg cartons, paper sacks, scraps of cloth.
“Great Flessner sure has lots of things,” remarked Jessie, eyes wide. She then went back to jumping from the foot-rest onto a pile of afghans and pillows and the pink fur rug Great Flessner had put out for their soft landing. And we all laughed together.
I was with Grandma when she died. The stroke she suffered two weeks prior had finally won the battle and it had wrestled her last breath from her. I watched my mom cradle Grandma as she left the life that had been so full, yet so difficult at the end.
I wrote down all the feelings I had then, along with the girls’ questions. Jessie, especially, was full of inquiries.
“Where did they bury Great Flessner, Mommy?” “Did they put her under the road?” “Will she grow this spring?”
And I wrote down my dreams, the dreams I had while dealing with her death. They are all in a notebook, with my reflections, ready to share with my girls, so that they know life is a cupboard of unpaired shoes and juxtaposed stories; a withering vine with fruit that produces seed that bears fruit again; warm bread and cool water that sustain the soul; a rainbow of notes in our spiritual margins; an unending chain of love passed back and forth between generations of women, who journey the road of life together and cradle each other in turn, and when needed provide each other with soft places to land. All of life is in that notebook, ready to share, if I can just remember where I put it.
It’s got to be here… somewhere.
In memory of my grandmother, Anna B. Flessner
Born October 30, 1902
Buried October 30, 1989
By Deb Carpenter-Nolting
Previously published in the Gering Citizen and the Western Nebraska Observer
October 21, 2010
Mary Susette had her right breast removed in May 1954, when she was 58 years old. Mary Susette was a writer, and she wrote up to the last minute before she was taken in for surgery, and then for the eight days she was in the hospital. The day after her surgery, she dictated to her secretary a fantasy story of a little man who fell in love with a dragonlike creature.
After she left the hospital, she felt her incision wasn’t healing as quickly as it should, so she followed a method that was used by Colonel Dodge in Kansas in 1870. He had soldiers expose their undressed stubborn wounds to air and wind. Since she was not in Kansas, she modified the remedy and sat before a fan in her New York apartment until the incision scabbed over. Then she resumed her life.
She was her busiest now, and at the top of her game, following a grueling schedule to promote her latest book.
The next few years she spent arguing with publishers, promoting new books, making television appearances, always researching, always writing.
She stopped long enough to have her other breast removed in January of 1964. She felt her first mastectomy had given her ten good years, so she was hopeful this operation would allow her time to finish the several books she had planned.
She recuperated more slowly this time, but by June she was crisscrossing America doing research. In October of 1964, she flew to Omaha and Lincoln to promote one of her books on the Great Plains. The flight home was excruciating, and later that month, she was fatigued and in pain. She went in for a checkup and discovered the cancer had spread to her bones. She continued to write, however, even though the bone cancer made every task painful and difficult.
Mary Susette was hospitalized in March of 1965. Her niece came to New York to act as her secretary, taking care of her mail, typing manuscripts, and then re-typing them after her aunt read and corrected them. When Mary Susette got out of the hospital and was able to manage on her own, she sent her niece home and became a recluse.
She worked on the proofs of her latest book until February of 1966, but had to return to the hospital at the end of the month. This time, she did not write. Perhaps that is what finally killed her. Mary Susette died March 10, 1966. Her body was brought back to Nebraska and she was buried on a hill overlooking the family homestead.
Mary Susette had grown up in the sandhills of Nebraska, when the land was first opened to settlers. Her family had a hardscrabble existence on the frontier, but it was proving ground for this young woman. She learned to work hard and persevere even when faced with adversity.
When she was twelve, she wrote a story that appeared in the Omaha Daily News, but was promptly locked in the cellar by her father as a punishment. Years later, in 1926, she received honorable mention for a story she had written about the sandhills, entitled, “Fearbitten.” Her father wrote to her, saying, “You know I consider writers and artists the maggots of society.”
She used the name Marie Macumber from the time of her marriage (1914), even after her divorce, until 1929, the year after her father died. She then changed it back to Sandoz, and used an altered version of her first name. Most of us recognize the name of the author Mari Sandoz.
What we often overlook are the difficulties she overcame to become one of Nebraska’s most revered authors. English was not her first language. She spoke Swiss German until she entered school at the age of nine. She was not able to complete her education because she was expected to help raise her siblings and work the farm. Her mother was not affectionate. Her father was volatile and often abusive.
She lost the sight in one eye due to snowblindness and her hands looked like a farmer’s hands. A bone in one hand had been broken by her father, and she carried the knobby reminder the rest of her life.
In her early teens, she sneaked off the place and rode horseback almost twenty miles to Rushville to take the test that would grant her a teacher certificate. She taught school and married and continued to write, and after a few brief years divorced her husband, citing “mental cruelty.” She moved to Lincoln, attended classes at the University of Nebraska, worked enough to pay her bills, survived on tea and sugar and crackers, researched, and wrote.
During that time, even though she worked at her craft and sent her work out, she had very few stories published. She kept a scrapbook of rejections. On the rare occasions she did publish something, she received no encouragement from her father, but rather rebukes.
It is ironic that her father’s deathbed wish was for her to write about his life, and that her success as an author is directly attributable to that book, “Old Jules,” which was rejected thirteen times before finally being published in 1935.
In her lifetime, Mari Sandoz wrote and published 22 books and numerous short stories and essays. She was respected as a historian, a writer, and a storyteller. How many more stories and books could she have written if her breast cancer had not spread?
In 1964, when Mari was in Nebraska promoting “The Beaver Men,” one of her books in the series on the Great Plains, Nebraska declared October 18-24 as Mari Sandoz Week. Forty-six years later, during Breast Cancer Awareness month, we can again honor Mary Susette Sandoz, and pay tribute to this woman who overcame numerous hardships in her life. It’s unfortunate that the one hardship she could not conquer was breast cancer.
Pulpit of Bones