Oklahoma Dreaming: My Housie
by Donna Schoenkopf
I have begun reading fairy tales again.
I have done this because I am substitute teaching. Grimm’s Fairy Tales are sure-fire crowd pleasers. They have everything that catches the attention: magic, beauty, ugliness, cannibalism, murder, monsters, stepchildren and stepmothers and kings and queens and princesses, good and evil, justice, life and death.
AND they have animals who reward people who are kind to them. (Have you read the one about the ants gathering all the rice grains so the dumb-but-kind youngest brother can win the hand of the princess?)
Some of those fairy tales are written in the dialect of yore—the dialect in Europe of two hundred years ago.
By the time I was seven I had read all the fairy tales in the local library. And many years after that, I realized that my mother, my very own dear sainted mother, spoke in that dialect when she was being all sweet and cuddly to us, her dear children. “Daughter” was pronounced “dorter,” “mother” was “mither.” And when you loved something wee and small, it had an “ie” on the end.
Like “housie.”
My housie.
I am going through a phase. I am sinking more deeply into living here. In the beginning of my life here, there was an alertness which kept me on my toes. It was an alertness born of the unknown, which was, on a daily basis, both joyful and painful. Rarely restful.
Until lately.
I have had episodes of feeling my unease/alertness lift.
At first, the lifting was barely perceptible. Life would walk on down the road, with me paying attention to every little thing because I HAD to. If I didn’t, I might miss something. Something good or something bad.
Then one day I realized that I had a sense of well-being that gently laid its arm around my shoulders. The feeling was fleeting. But every now and then I would feel it.
But this morning, this place, this housie, wrapped both arms around me and hugged me and loved me and I exhaled and snuggled in.
Why this day?
The weather is coldish, gray, moist; the ground—muddy. There are gusts of hard wind, but they are few and far between. The light breaks through the clouds now and then, illuminating everything in the clearest light.
The trees have a budleaf on every tip of every branch and twig.
Soft and luscious deep green buffalo grass stands, swaying in the wind.
Diego the Dog comes home early from Neighbor Dog, Sally’s, house. Today he likes it here with me and the cats.
(He buries bones, you know. Not only bones, but dog biscuits, and once, a hot dog. Yesterday he buried a dog biscuit in the driveway. IN the driveway.
I had given him the biscuit and then walked outside to go to the mailboxes a half a mile away. It’s a lovely walk. He followed me with the biscuit in his mouth for about 30 feet, stopped, started digging a shallow hole right there in the gravel driveway, dropped the biscuit into it, and shoveled the gravel back over the hole with his nose.
And off we walked.
We returned with the mail, and Diego ran up to where he had buried his “bone” and dug it out and laid himself out on the grass and ate it up. Yum.
The first time I saw him bury a bone, I was sure he’d never find it again. He had been burying treats I had given him—three smoked ham bones I bought for $2.99 apiece, various dog biscuits, and the aforementioned hot dog. Those things cost a lot of money and it perturbed me that he was just burying good money, but he was really earnest and it was worth $2.99 apiece just to watch his cleverness.
Some time later, I saw him happily gnawing on a large bone on the grass in the “yard.”
Hmmmmmmm. I hadn’t given him one that day. Could it be that he actually went and got it from his secret hiding place? Nawww.
Then, some days later, he showed up with another one.
He was retrieving his bones! He knew exactly where he had buried them!
(Awwwwwwww.)
Could it be that the cats have me settled in? They like it here, too. Even Che has begun spending time outside, eating grasshoppers and bounding through the high grass. I don’t worry as much if Rosie is late in coming in at night. She’s made it for over a year now.
Or is it the people who come to visit me?
Like Duane and Betsy, whom I hadn’t seen in over 40 years, who had a gin and tonic and some tasty treats and we talked and talked and laughed and remembered.
Or The Cell, checking the place out.
Or friends from town over for dinner and drinks and conversation.
Maybe it’s the memory of Trent’s visit on Sunday.
He’s five, and with his mother and daddy, my closest neighbors. His daddy brought him over in Trent’s new purple dune buggy that the Easter Bunny had brought him.
Trent had never been in my house before. He ran from one end of the house to the other. He had a million questions. He told me liked all my windows. He wanted to know what was in the only “closet” in the house. (It is my heating/air conditioner and my water heater.) He said he liked my house because he could run all around in it.
Is it because he counted all my mirrors (seven) and wanted me to bake him chocolate chip cookies?
Or is it that my darling dorter and my handsome grandson drove thousands of miles to be with me. They came the week of snow and sun and wind and rain. They walked the property and chose a place to put their house. (It’s in the glen on a cliff of rock surrounded by forest, with little violets that grow against the fallen and moss-covered branches.
My darling dearie told me she felt sad to leave me and that she loved it here. The week had been homey. We just hung out, took a walk or two, ate a couple of dinners out. Becca read and wrote and Jimmy sat by the pond and watched baby frogs and explored the meadow with his cousins, and I snuggled in deeper.
More and more this place is becoming mine.
But why did that acceptance happen today? That feeling of total peace and belonging?
Is it the beautiful light playing across the scene between the darkening clouds?
Is it the push of the wind making everything dance?
Is it the smell of the spaghetti sauce on the stove, wafting past me, or the sound of Fareed Zakaria speaking indecipherably in the background, or the sense of freedom from worry of ticks, lightning, and lack of money?
Oh, the sky is so beautiful right now. The clouds are every shade of gray and cream. They are fat and full of rain. There are banks on banks on banks of them stretching out across the sky as far as you can see.
Is that why?
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
Good for you, saving money on typical housing and have a great place
2009-04-30 by Robin Sue Nottingham
Very nice.
2009-04-30 by Annie