Jaci Dawn

I can tell you my favorite animal, but I cannot tell you why. They are beauty in motion, but so is a cat, a deer, an elk, or an eagle. They have intelligent eyes, but so do dogs. They can learn tricks, but so can dogs, monkeys, cats, and birds. They can kill you, but so can a dog.

What is it about horses that draw my eyes to them? That smell of horsehair under the fingers? The whiskers tickling a hand, looking for a treat? Those swiveling ears, that tell you what mood the horse is in? The one-sided look (because a horse can’t look you dead on, but only with one eye at a time when you are close). Flowing manes and thundering hooves?

I was drawn to horses before I knew any of those attributes. They peppered my black-and-white television dreams in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I was forbidden to go in the corrals (after a USFS employee looked down from the barn loft and saw me toddling about under the legs of the half-wild remuda while he was feeding them. I got a whopping, I’m sure, but I don’t remember that. I just remember horse legs and the startled shout of the man in the loft window). I could stand on the rails and coax a horse over with a handful of hay, but someone must have taught me early on how to release the hay to the inquisitive lips of the horse on the other fence. I petted many a velvety muzzle and felt warm breath on my hands – and for a particularly friendly over-the-fence horse, I sometimes could scratch its poll and feel how strong it was.

Horses. Bays, sorrels, palominos, whites, dapples, roans, grullas, duns, blacks, and pintos. My father’s favorite horse was a big blue roan grulla. My best friend’s Shetland pony was a grulla. My first horse (I owned him for 10 seconds) was a brown and white pinto. My second horse (I owned her for several years) was a snow-flake red roan Appaloosa. My third horse (owned in conjunction with the second) was a registered bay Quarterhorse that nobody wanted.

Wait. Why did I only own a horse for ten seconds? He was a very popular horse around the high school, and his owner often rode him to school. Horse. That was his name. Her name was Penny. Penny cleaned dog kennels to earn enough money to buy Horse, and once she owned him, shoe often rode him from her home along the McGill Highway into town to go to school. She tied him in the park across the street.

Penny & I had PE together for two years. She was a year ahead of me. We weren’t really friends, just classmates. Girls with only one thing in common: horses. I’d never even met Horse because Penny ran with a different crowd than I did. But she came to me one day and asked me if I wanted Horse. She was getting married (a lot of girls in my high school did that long before graduation) and she could no longer keep Horse. He needed someone who would love him, and she had chosen ME to be his new owner. For free. A gorgeous brown and white Pinto. FREE.

I held onto that dream for about ten seconds before I admitted I was going to go to college and I, too, would abandon Horse. I couldn’t take him. It would be unfair to him. But I miss him as if I had taken him and ridden him to school like Penny did. He was mine, even if for only a few seconds.

My other two horses were free, too. Whisper, the Arab/Appy, was a divorce rescue – just two years old when I got her. My dream horse. I held onto her for as long as I could, learning to trust horses, learning how to read them, learning how to avoid being hurt by them (oh, yeah, I got kicked once – right in the gluteus maximus!), and learning how to train a trail horse. She was a good trail horse, willing and not shy about breaking trail. She was also an Appaloosa, and more stubborn than a mule when she wanted to be.

The bay fell into my hands because I was already taking care of him, and his owner became disinterested in him. His owner was never really interested in him: he just bought the horse because his best friend was a horseman, and they needed horses to go hunting, and his friend said the horse was well-papered and had good conformation. (The horse didn’t have good conformation, not by a Quarterhorse standard: he was too skinny through the hindquarters, and someone had trimmed his hooves wrong early in his life. Took us years to get that corrected, and he still had to have shoes on in order to walk comfortably). His name was Sunny or Sonny, but that sounded too much like my father-in-law, Sonny. We changed it to Major Payne.

Major was a great kid’s horse. Barn sour as all get out, but he could give a kid a fun ride, he never considered bucking (Whisper crow-hopped and bucked if she got mad at you), and he never argued when he was on a lead. I let the neighborhood kids ride Major. My kids were allowed on Whisper. Truth is, they were both good with kids, but Major was always docile, whereas Whisper had a question mark over her ears at all times: “You in control? Just checking.”

Major’s mouth was hard. His former owner once bridled him up and rode him for seven miles (hold your breath) with the curb bit in backward. Yeah.

I used a snaffle on Whisper. I trained her to rein, because that’s the only way I know how to ride. She responded to knee pressure.

I never rode Major. He wasn’t a favorite, but more of a horse that got dumped on me by default.

They were both smart. Major could open any gate or latch (so long as it wasn’t “hot” ). We nicknamed him “Velociraptor” because of his habit of walking along the hot-wire fence with his whiskers just skimming the electric charge. As soon as the charge quit pulsing, Major breached the fence. Lots of hours were spent coaxing horse back into the pasture so we could fix the hot wire, because Major walked through it as soon as it was “down”. When we passed him on to new owners, he let himself out of their barn the first night.

We warned them.

Whisper was just a gentle little mare, 15 hands high. She had a lot of expressions. I miss her. She came from regal Arabian lines, but there was no registration: she was born of an Arab mare that had been turned out with an Appy stud. The stud’s owners claimed the mare “didn’t take” and disavowed any offspring. The mare was sold to the man I got Whisper from, and by spring, she foaled. She obviously “took”, but he Appy’s owner refused to acknowledge the foal. There was no way to register, but the owne r kept meticulous records (as did I).

I’m sorry my little mare got lost in the horse passes on to another owner mess. My husband promised me that wouldn’t happen, but he was wrong. I don’t know where she ended up before she died. She’d be 29 this year, so I am pretty certain she is long gone. Major was older,

I hope they were in good hands. I also hope to see them over the Rainbow Bridge.

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This is not really an exercise for writing as much as it also a little “brag” on my accomplishments in my other 30-day commitment (non-writing).

What’s that, you ask? I committed to getting my art website up and functional, my mini paintings into galleries (on line), my Facebook page spritzed up, and opening an Etsy store – all in time for the Christmas shopping season. If that sounds easy, you don’t know me. I’m basically very lazy.

I get up as late as possible to drive the three miles to work. I work 8 hours plus a 30-minute lunch, so that time is on someone else’s dime, and I can’t work on my projects there. Then I come home, and all I want to do is vegetate. I don’t want to look at a computer screen and think. But I committed.

My progress has been slow, but I also have not pulled out my SMART Goals to see how I am doing. I got all of the current mini paintings scanned (so much easier and professional than photography! Loving the medium!), and I uploaded them into albums on my Two Crow feather Woman Art Facebook business page (https://www.facebook.com/twocrowfeatherwoman/). I updated most of my pages on my art website (the galleries). (I have some more work to do on that.*)

Tonight, I “opened” my Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/TwoCrowFeatherWoman). That’s not as easy as it sounds, either, because I had to write about myself (which seems to come naturally here, but not when I’m trying to actually “sell” myself). I still have some things to tweak, but I GOT IT OPEN.

I watched several tutorials on how to set up a business Instagram page, and will be doing that in the next couple of weeks (I’ll announce it here and on Facebook).

My website (TwoCrowFeatherWoman.com) is being held up. I updated all of the galleries except for one – a soccer team. I realized that I was short two players (!) and I need to get those two critters painted before I can update that gallery to a professional level. Well, one more: I finished one tonight. I also need to find the best WordPress Apps for sending/receiving emails and for setting up PayPal for potential clients. I know there must be a way to set it up to receive secure credit card payments as well, but I haven’t found anything on that (yet). Needless to say, I’m reading, watching how-to videos, and making use of the Interwebs search engines. It’s a little overwhelming.

Overwhelming because now I know there are other art sites that I could also set up a shop on, and I’ve been comparing those (Redbubble vs. Zazzle, for instance). But that’s kind of running down a rabbit trail and digressing from my outlined goals. Also, where is the best place to get giclée prints made so I can sell little cards and prints of my paintings long after I’ve sold the original? (I have a local spot to check out, then I’ll consider online – but most online stores sell the wrong size cards for what I want…). (And, yes, I think giclée is better than cold press for what I want to do.)

I’ve also had a couple of commissions come in, and I’ve had to stop to paint those and mail them. (Happy Dance)

But I’m so close to my set goals, and I’m learning how to doggedly pursue my goals.

Last, may I present my most recent soccer player, Sandy Zwartble. She is, of course, a Zwartble sheep of Friesland, Netherlands.

3×3″ acrylic on canvas – appears much larger than actual size)

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I don’t like to call it a “random” act, let’s get that clear. I think acts of kindness should be the norm, not some random thing we do. I forget that most of the time, though, so maybe it is a random act. I’m pretty guilty of letting steam off on some poor store manager or rude driver, even if it’s just flipping them the Bird behind their back.

Shame on me. I should do better.

Sometimes, I do better. Those are the times I like to remember.

Pay it forward. That is a phrase I love. Every act of kindness is an act of paying it forward (although, every act of retribution and anger is also paying it forward, in a way: you reap what you sow).

When I lose it, I’m not listening. I’m not in control. I’m immature. I’m allowing frustration to guide me rather than kindness. I pay for those moments in my conscience, if nowhere else. I hate myself, berate myself, want to hide in a hole and never come out again. Fortunately, those acts are far and few as I age. I’m getting better.

What was the last “random” act of kindness that you did? Why?

I can’t recall the most recent, but it is usually something that whispers in my heart that I cannot not do something for someone. Hand them $5. Buy a bottle of wine for them. Pay their tab. Give them my favorite Santa Claus hat. (I actually looked for the hat the next Christmas, and then remembered I had given it away to a Salvation Army bell ringer who had admired it. She was thrilled.)

We need more kindness in this world. I want to pledge myself to being more kind. I’ve done enough stupid things in my life, said enough stupid things — I just want to leave a happiness trail behind me.

What about you?

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It is October, the month when we draw closer to the veil. That makes it a good time to tell a good ghost story, don’t you think?

My best friend lived two blocks from my house. We met on Saturdays, as soon as my chores were done, and went on adventures, played pretend, lip-synced to The Monkees, or played dress up. We wrote crazy plays and forced our parents to watch them as we acted them out. We build elaborate stories around our model horses or the little plastic farm animals one could buy at the Five-and-Dime or the toy aisle in the supermarket. We rode her pony or pretended we were horses.

Matilda was the youngest child of a Catholic family. They owned a rambling ranch-style home overlooking the city golf course. I was the middle child of a Protestant/agnotsic family. We lived in a rambling concrete monster of a house that had been hand-poured by the previous owner, mostly without permits or much attention to detail. My parents painted it pink. Very pink.

One of the oddities of Matilda’s home was the front entry: it was a long hall that was usually dark. The only time anyone used the front door was if someone actually rang the doorbell there, or if we kids hauled out the dress-up box. The doors everyone used were the car port entry door and the patio door (but only to leave). They had a TV room, which was wonderfully novel to me, plus a color television. We had a black and white TV that sat in the living room. Their living room, it seemed to me, was mostly unused, except when we played dress-up and listened to old records of Johnny Horton and other old western albums. They had dinner at 6:00PM, promptly, and they always bowed their heads and blessed the food.

Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

The house I lived in had concrete stairs that were of differing heights. There was an addition of an old barber shop that my dad converted into a guest room. A huge shop was attached to that. It was a ranch-style home, as well, with massive concrete blocks off the front porch that seemed to have no purpose other than we could climb them. A hallway separated living quarters from the shop, and there was a dank, unfinished basement under the house part where my mother set up her laundry room. Dad remodeled the house to have three bedrooms. The front door opened into the living room, where we watched out black and white TV, or my sister and I danced to 45’s of old 1960’s rock-n-roll.

Out back was an orchard, flower beds, and a large strawberry patch. We found evidence the former owner practiced some sort of witchcraft back there: she sprinkled egg shells among the plants. (I know: horrors! To this day, I add egg shells to my compost.) She had a cupboard of exotic herbs and spices, all old. Mom used the general ones: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, pepper, salt. But this woman had everything under the sun in her herb and spice tins: turmeric, allspice, alum, ginger, rosemary, oregano, basil – well, my spice cupboard looks a lot like old Vera’s did back when we labeled her a witch.

We had dinner whenever my parents got around to it, often after nine at night in the summer months. There was no grace spoken over the meal.

There was a dog skull buried under the strawberry patch.

Both houses had secrets. Things that went bump! in the night. Things that moved of their own free will. The attic window of our house broke out every time my dad had it replaced. We kids heard footsteps in the hall way. My mom’s dog retreated from the hallway to cower under the covers in my brother’s bedroom. Going to the bathroom in the night was a test of courage (and was usually lost).

One day, we discovered this long indigo blue scarf in the dress up box at mat’s house. It was 4×8′ and a beautiful blue. It was the perfect wrap for any dress up outfit we could think of. We even hauled it to my house to play with it, and then we stuffed it into my dress up box at the end of the day. We called it The Blue Cape.

Of course, the next time we pulled the dress ups out of the box at my house, we couldn’t find the scarf. It was just gone.

And the next time we pulled the dress ups out of Mat’s box, it was right on top, folded neatly.

Then it was at my house, without any of us having carried it there.

The nightmares began shortly after that. My sister woke up, screaming and crying. When my parents asked her about her dream, the blue scarf had been hovering over her head, sucking the air out of her lungs. Nor was she the only one of us to have that same experience: Mat did. I did. The scarf moved from here to there, never where we were certain we’d left it last. We made notes about where we left it.

Soon, we didn’t play with it at all. There was something terrifying about that 4×8′ of nylon cloth. None of us could explain it to our parents, who, being adults, didn’t believe a bit of what we swore was true.

In 1970, my father relocated and the family followed. We were past dress-up by then, but we did one last thing: Mat send The Blue Cape (now referred to in capitols) to live with us, in our dress up box (because, Hallowe’en).

The scarf never made it to our new home in another town. My sister and I opened the box, expectant to see it where we had packed it – and it was gone. It never showed up at Mat’s. It simply disappeared – just like it had appeared.

No parent figure ever claimed to know where it came from. It just appeared. And now it was gone.

Just gone. And, of course, no parent figure would admit to throwing it away.

And 47 years later, I still get the heebie-jeebies writing about it. In retrospect, I don’t recall that it ever snagged or had a run in the material. It was always perfect.

I also find it very, very odd that I cannot find a single image on the internet that resembles The Thing. It was evil.

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Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:     Ephesians 6:10-17 KJV

The world was on fire. Starmund stood, alone. on the battlefield. She held her short sword at her side. ready. No enemy came forth, however, and she was forced to retreat to avoid the flames and hot lava.

Coughing, she shielded her face with her sword arm as she picked her way through the scorched landscape. Here and there, she picked out the corpses of dragons or warriors. She averted her eyes, unwilling to see, afraid of what she might see – or who. The brush, trees, earth all smoked from the fires of the battle. Blackened boulders directed her steps out of the battlefield, back to the cave where not two days before, she had sheltered with her fellow warriors.

The cave was empty now. The fire ring, the sleeping pads, the dishes – scattered about in disarray. No one had stayed there, and Starmund felt her heart sink. Had even the serving people fled? Or worse. been destroyed? This place was supposed to be impenetrable by the dragons, and yet – There was a large print in the soft soil near the entrance, clear and undeniable: a dragon had been here.

She was stumbling now, hungry, thirty, exhausted. She found a flask of water that remained unspilt, and she drank of it. There was a loaf of bread on a shelf, and she broke into it, eating hungrily, unwilling to look at it for fear she might see signs of mold and, therefor, throw it away. She staggered through the cavern, looking under blankets, checking cots, seeking any survivors. But there were none.

And no bones or corpses.

She sat down on the lip of the cave and stared out into the distance. Fires still burned. Judging by the occasional puff of fire in the heavens, the dragons still flew. And someone still resisted them.

Finally, she cleaned out the largest fire pit of debris. The fire was long cold, but the ground was hollowed into the earth, and she could curl up in the depression to sleep. She needed to sleep.

She curled into it, fetal position, on her right side, with her sword held at ready in front of ther, and her shieled pulled down over the pit to cover her. She willed it to look like just another abandoned shield, prayed that her God would make the dragons blind to the shield and her human form underneath it. Slowly, breathing from her stomach, she drifted to sleep.

It was the loud thump of something heavy landing in the cave that awakened her. The ground vibrated. A second thump.

“I’m tired,” spoke a basso voice. “This cave seems safe enough.”

“Humans have been here. Recently.”

“Gone now.” The first voice seemed to be right on top of her. “I cannot smell any.”

“Huh.” the other voice huffed. “Then we rest here. I will sleep at the cave’s entrance. I do not trust these humans.”

“I will sleep here.”

The ground trembled, and Starmund  felt her shield shift in the darkness. She tensed before she pushed upward and was relieved to see she could let in a whiff of fresh air. Two dragons. One close. One in the cave entrance. She needed strength and wisdom.

*stop. I actually started this years ago, before my sister died. What are your thoughts on this brief example? I’m open. It was started as a project for my sister.

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I started this 31 day writing challenge for no particular reason other than to type out a few short essays, and maybe – just maybe – come up with a novel idea for November. Why November? National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo, wherein the aspiring writer is challenged to punch out a novel of no less than 50,000 words in just 30 days.

I’ve succeeded three times (I think). Two of my short novels have promise and one just is stupid, stupid, stupid. They are all sitting on the back burner of my life, waiting for me to get serious and edit, polish, and publish.

Why the back burner? Because, at present, I have building my art business on the front burner. And standing firmly between the two ideals (writing full time and painting full time, or a combination thereof) is my Day Job. 40 hours a week that I sell my soul to a steady paycheck, and I cannot work on the things I love. So I steal time away from my husband and hide in my studio and plug out as much art work related work and snippets of writing that I can get in.

Sometimes, I give in and go downstairs to watch a movie with the husband, or a series of television shows. Weekends, of course, I use for the mundane chores, gardening, and beer tasting.

That said, I have gained two ideas for a novel in November: a mystery novel involving my very boring view and a YA novel about a teenager in denial about her magical powers (the latter is winning the popular vote). I am considering writing that nanowrimo novel on my blog so you all can critique as I go, complain about lousy plot twists, bad grammar, and poor dialogue. It could be quite fun – and challenging for me, as I’ve never fancied myself as one who can take criticism. 🙂

I am also working on a 31 day coaching goal of building up my art website, improving my online gallery, and finding an outlet to advertise and sell online (my original goal was Etsy, but now I am comparing websites like Redbubble and Zazzle in hopes of reaching my target in sales). That’s not mentioning the idea of getting prints made (giclée is sounding more and more like what I want to do, but finding an inexpensive printer and the right size card stock + envelopes is proving more difficult than I imagined). I’d like this all in place before the real Christmas rush happens (wish me luck!).

It’s taking longer than I anticipated to get all the paintings scanned an uploaded to the right gallery on my website (which is where I am going as soon as I finish this). I did get them all uploaded to Facebook – I just need to “boost” my different photo albums in time for Christmas to see if I can’t pick up a few sales – so I did reach that step in my list of goals.

Art in October. Novel in November. And I still have to find time to deck the halls for all the different Holidays!

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She was a fool for it, of course. Magic was in everything she touched. Not believing in it was a rebellion on her part. She just didn’t want to be different, or set apart, from anyone at school. She could hide her parents, downplay magic, even disbelieve in it – her friends accepted her. Better: they didn’t believe in magic. Photoshop, yes. Magic: no.

Anything could be digitally reproduced. Anything could be digitally created. There was no god, no spiritual side of things, and certainly no magic. Everything had a logical explanation.

Except that there was Aric, her brother, two years younger, horizontal to the earth and three feet up from the floor, levitating. He was playing a video game and levitating. She walked by and pushed hard on his shoulder, sending him crashing to the hardwoods.

“Hey!!”

Ella ignored him. She opened the fridge, pulled out a carton of milk and poured it over a bowl of Lucky Charms. Weren’t her parents just quaint? She sat down and scooped a spoonful of wheaty health and sugary death. Crunch.

Aric appeared in the doorway. “That was rude, Ella.”

She shrugged. “It’s not normal to levitate.”

“Magic.” Aric sighed and retreated from the room, too old to be bothered with his sister’s odd logic.

She saw her friends coming up the long walkway and grabbed her bags, clicked on the security code, and uttered a dire warning: “Leaving now, Derp. better come with as I’m arming the alarm. School time, Boyfriend!”

Aric appeared at her right hand as she opened the door and smiled. “It’s still magic, dork.” He ran past her friends and down to the bus stop. Ella rolled her eyes before locking the house.

“Hey.” she said, smiling up at Dish, Gran, and Billie. “Bus stop or did someone drive a car?” She winked at Billie, who had just passed her driver’s ed test.

“Actually, Ella, none of the above. We really need to talk about your denial. You can’t keep this up.” Dish was the tall, lean, dark-eyed one. His face was usually pallid and his eyes looked sunken most of the time.

Gran had a more athletic presence: wiry, compact, and a member of the school’s track team. Tonight, he had an unshaven look about his face, and his eyes shifted from left to right. Billie held his hand in a death grip. “Look, Ella, we really need to just come in and crash. It’s full moon, you know. Gran and Dish are having a hard time right now. Can we just hang in your room upstairs?”

Ella blinked a couple of times, and then looked down toward the bus stop where Aric was waiting. “Sure, why not?” She locked the door behind her friends as the yellow bus stopped to pick up the junior high kids and Aric stepped inside.

“So – what is up. Exactly.”

“Ella, Sweetheart, we need to quit denying the pull of the full moon.” Gran wrapped his strong arm around her shoulder. “And you can’t fool your little brother. He’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“What??!!” Ella whirled before her bedroom door. She understood the inuendoes. Had everyone gone insane? They all looked at her with such utter innocence. Billie spoke first.

“I get that you deny magic, Ella, but you are denying the basic truth of yourself. And of your brother. And of your best friends. We haven’t said anything because it didn’t affect us until now. Now they are threatening to put practitioners in jail. Read the news. Your parents have been arrested.” Billie shoved a newspaper under Ella’s nose at the same time as the downstairs doorbell rang.

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Empathy: Write about your feelings of empathy or compassion for another person.

I check the news in the morning to make certain we are still here, on this planet, breathing air. Anything could happen in the night: North Korea could bomb us, war could be declared, martial law, an earthquake could drop the entire West Coast into the ocean.This morning’s news confirmed we are not all here.

A psychopath stood on the 32nd floor of a ritzy Las Vegas hotel and fired full automatic weapons into a crowd of 22,000 attending a country music festival in the arena down below him. He didn’t have to be a good shot: he’d converted at least one weapon to fully automatic. The last count of the dead was up to 59. Over 520 people injured.

I have tried all day to steer away from the false reports, the angry reports, and the graphic photos. My heart has hurt. I feel the pain of every mother, father, brother, sister, cousin, grandparent, friend searching for that one person. I die a little inside with each news flash.

We have an epidemic of madness in this world. If not a firearm, then a semi-truck. Or a suicide bomber.  Sarin gas on a commuter train. Hordes of Mongols on their sure-footed horses bearing down on unprotected villages, burning, killing, raping, and leaving no survivors. Machete-wielding tribes burning down churches and schools, following the blue print of the Mongols. Children targeted.

We want to explain it through politics and psycho-babble, control, and blame. We try to downplay the act with the words, “Not a terrorist act” – yet, it was surely a terrorist act. A lone terrorist with an arsenal of weapons, some converted illegally into fully automatic weapons, and a truly diabolical plan to inflict the most damage as possible before taking his own life.

I have no answers. I cannot peer into the mind of a being that would inflict such pain, horror, and death on another person – or group of people. I don’t understand how it happens in Israel or the Ukraine or Myanmar, North Vietnam, North Korea, France, Spain, Norway, or Ireland. I don’t know how it happens in Sandy Hook or Columbine High School or Clackamas Town Center.

Every time it happens, wherever it happens, I mourn with the survivors and the families, I sense the fear and terror of the victims. I can’t read certain history passages because of the violence, terror, and destruction. I am haunted by James Michener’s Afghanistan, where he describes a column made of human skulls, built by one of the Khans. Skulls of the conquered.

We’re a mad race, we human beings.

Tonight, I mourn in empathy with those who mourn.

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Someone unexpected just sat down next to you on an airplane. Who is it, and what have you always wanted to say to them?

The airline oversold the flight. I wasn’t the unlucky bastard who got selected to not fly, but who does this on a holiday week? We’re all just trying to get somewhere to visit family, you know? At least I got in on the first call to general seating, and my carry-on was small, so I got to my seat and settled long before the plane filled. Keep a low profile, but walk like you own the world, that’s my travel motto.

They came down the aisle and asked the guy next to me to give up his seat. I thought he was going to fight them, but they offered him a nice sum of money and he said, “What the hell.”

The young man who took his place excused himself as he squeezed by me for the middle seat. Dark complexioned, well-groomed, professional. Looked like he could afford a first class seat, but here he was in 20B. We didn’t speak until after take-off and the plane leveled out. I opened my e-reader and he opened his lap top.

I didn’t mean to see his name or the subject of the email. Khaled Hosseini. The Khaled Hosseini. You know: author of The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, And the Mountains Echoed? THAT author.

He didn’t stay on his email, but moved to a website -his website- and started answering fan mail. Me, I flipped out of the book I was reading and scanned through my e-reader. I found A Thousand Splendid Suns and reached for my courage. I held up my reader and said to him, “This book changed my life.”

He smiled. “I am glad to hear that. How did it change your life? Tell me about it.”

The flight passed quickly. We stood to disembark and he turned to me, “Thank you for telling me your story. I only want to tell the stories from my homeland, and yet they seem to resound with so many people. If you have a chance, I have a charity to help the people of Afghanistan. But if you will only encourage others to read my books to understand my people, it will be worth it to me.”

Then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a copy of his newest book, signed it, and handed it to me. “It has been my pleasure.”

Truly a fantasy. 🙂

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It is the late 1970’s, the “disco” era, but I have moved to a small town in eastern Oregon that is full in the grips of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. I’m single, and husband hunting. I’ve already been discarded by several, and have discarded several. This relationship stuff sucks big time. Most of my friends are married, but I have a few single ones who fall into two classes: strict Christian/no dating and crazy/drink a lot of alcohol. I’m somewhere in the middle: church on Sunday, but the bars on “Ladies’ Night” (Thursdays). Still, the prospects are sometimes dicey and I have to think up lies to slip out of a tryst or I go home alone, wondering how I am ever going to find love?

(Answer: wait for it. Those who strive for it are forever doomed to be disappointed. But I was in my 20s, and you couldn’t tell me that. It had to happen. NOW.)

There are a lot of songs that resonate in my soul. I love music. I can’t sing and I am pretty sad at playing any instrument (my band teacher once told me I was better than I thought I was, but I think he was just being nice). Heck, my 5-year old daughter told me, “Mom! Please! You’re off-key. Don’t sing.”

Still, I surround myself with music. LPs and 45s were my first introduction into the world of music, along with the folk music lessons of public school. I saved my pennies and bought records once I passed the model horse phase. I joined Columbia Records and then left them so I could sign up again, just to get the 13 free albums or whatever they were offering. I immersed myself in the folk culture of the 1960’s, the hard rock of the early 1970’s, and there was always – always! – the contemporary country music of the time: Buck Owens, Tammy Lynnette, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Lynn Anderson, Charlie Pride, and (my mother’s favorite) The Statler Brothers.

In 1978, there were possibly three dance bars in the small Oregon town I moved to: Scotty’s, “The Snake Pit” ( a bar that was underneath the Shanghai Restaurant), and the Shang (the Shanghai Restaurant after restaurant hours). I avoided the latter. If I was drunk enough, and in the company of Carol (who was crazy), I’d go to the Snake Pit (not the real name of the bar, but the name I remember it by forty years later).

On the Snake Pit – I once danced several rounds with this elderly cowboy who absolutely rocked the “country swing”. He made bad dance partner look good. He was probably 70 and I was 22. He was looking for nothing more than a girl to dance with.

There was no dancing at Scotty’s, so the rest had to be done at The Shang. They hired a local cover band. The music was generic: anything from “Tupelo Honey” to “My Sharona” – if it had a beat and you could dance to it, they played it.

I realize I should be writing about my first dance with my future husband or the song that I felt (at age 23) should define our marriage (Tupelo Honey, by the way), but that isn’t the song that I have chosen to write about tonight (there are so many!). It isn’t even about the man I picked up on a Thursday night on the dance floor of The Shang: this is about a man who was never more than a casual friend, and a song that reminds me of him when I hear it play. Not a romantic interest, just someone I really liked as a friend.

His name was Alan. And, inevitably, we’d both be single at closing time, with no prospects for the night. So we’d choose each other and we’d close the bar to “Good Night, Irene”, and we’d go our separate ways. It was never about romance with Alan, it was just about that one song and that one closing dance.

I was introduced to the song when I was around the tender age of 12, flat-chested, and camping with the “Sage Stompers” – a square dancing group my folks belonged to. I remember the where: the Ranger Station at Hinckey Summit. My dad (a USFS District Ranger) opened the gates, and everyone camped down among the aspens. We kids were sent to bed with the crickets, but our elders drank and sang into the very late hours. I couldn’t sleep and listened while the adults grew louder, and my father got bolder.

He sang all the bawdy choruses of “Roll Me Over In The Clover” (to my mother’s protests that “some child might over hear”). Then he turned to the family friend, Irene, and sang (out of tune, of course) “Good Night, Irene.”

When I danced the last dance with Alan, and we slow danced to that well known number, it was never Alan that I was thinking about, but my father. And after the song was over, Alan & I exchanged hugs and went our ways. It was always platonic with him.

Now, when I hear “Good Night Irene”, it is not my father I think of, but Alan. I wonder where he is, did he marry, is he happy, did he have kids? He was a good friend. I hope he found the happiness I found.

(No one sings Roll Me Over in the Clover. That’s just embarrassing.)

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