In the Company of Woman

I don't know if the world is falling apart any more than it ever was, or is it that I am getting older? I'm not sure which is which, but lately, it's been a bit of a challenge to look on the bright side. Don't get me wrong, I'm managing, but it would be all the harder if I didn't periodically have little gems of experiences to remind me of the beauty of life. I was lucky to have such an experience last Tuesday.
A group of us here in Copenhagen have decided to put together an anthology. It's a project initiated by the American Woman's Club and will be partly funded by said group. For those of you who know me, you know I'm a Groucho Marx kind of girl when it comes to clubs, but I do have to say that whatever experiences I have had with these women have been overwhelming positive and have even made me reconsider my preconceived notions of what comprises a club.
So anyway, last Tuesday when we all met to discuss the upcoming anthology, one of the women present, Corky, read aloud Velda Metelmann's work. While she read aloud the words of another, who, due to geography could not be present, there was something ancient that stirred within. Here I was, in the company of women, from all walks of life, listening to the work of a woman, who although was not there, was present. So, as a gift to you my readers, I have received permission to reprint this story so that hopefully you, no matter where in the world you may now be, and no matter how hopeless the world may seem, will be reminded of the interconnectedness of us all and not least of all, that there is beauty. It is with much pleasure that I introduce the following work to you. But before we get there, here is a little information the author has written about herself:

I was born in Eastern Oregon in 1922 and lived in Oregon throughout my childhood. I have lived in Oregon, Washington, Virginia, and Illinois, and spent a year in Alaska before it became a state during WWII. My first marriage of 35 years brought me three sons, six grandsons, one granddaughter, three daughters-in-law who are answers to prayer, two great-grandsons, and one great-granddaughter. I love my extended family, pets, reading, socializing, photography, dancing, and playing bridge. Nothing makes me happier than writing. The Bahá'í faith directed my life in pleasant paths and it was the faith that took me to Denmark where I met my present husband. We've been married 25 years. After living in Denmark for 23 years and traveling around the world, we returned to the United States.


WHEN RATTLESNAKES ARE BLIND

And other Vignettes by Velda Metelmann

Mama said rattlesnakes are always blind in August when they shed, so until they get their heads out of their old skins they’d strike at anything. She told me to carry a stick, drag it along the ground, and make a lot of noise when I went to get the mail. She said snakes are more scared of us than we are of them and will rustle out of sight when they hear us coming.

On the way back to the house I didn’t hippity-hop, which I loved to do, but I couldn’t resist running sometimes with the mail clutched to my chest and the stick forgotten. I figured any rattlesnake in the vicinity would leave on my trip out to the mailbox, so there was no danger on my return. I couldn’t remember my knees without scabs; another fall and another skinned place were nothing to cry about. Mama said my knees would be as smooth as hers when I grew up. She was right – but my knees still have scars from those long-ago wounds.

Mama wasn’t always right but she did not admit to being wrong, and it was never helpful to point out to her when I thought she was. I learned to chalk up those rather rare events silently in my mind. Very early when she spanked me I made the mistake of telling her, “It didn’t even hurt!” but learned a valuable lesson that day: always cry loudly and quickly when you’re spanked.

HOME
Turning back from the gate with the mail and the newspapers, I could see our house nestled in trees. The expression on its face – the two window eyes, the red screened door like a nose, and the unpainted stoop for a mouth – that was truly Home. I couldn’t see it from the gate but knew that, behind the house, was a shed storing coal, kindling, wood, and stacks of old magazines. It was covered so closely with hop vines that it looked more like a green cave than a building. Behind it, the outhouse had no vines because Daddy moved it now and again. Far to the left I could see the roof of the henhouse peeking above sumacs and backed by slender new cottonwoods.

Mama had a work table set under a window that looked out toward distant mountains at the end of the valley of the North Fork of the Walla Walla River. The blue slopes of those high hills were snow-clad in the winter. We always called that view the Kitchen Window Mountain. The work table had a tin top where Mama rolled out biscuits and cookies and thumped the big loaves of bread into smooth white lumps to be set to rise under a dampened tea towel before going into the hot oven of the big black coal and wood range that reigned in our kitchen. She put her hand into the oven to check the temperature.

Under the tin top of the work table was a wide drawer that held cooking implements: a potato masher, a round metal cutter with a green handle that she used to cut out biscuits and cookies, a potato ricer that squished cooked potatoes out of its little holes into warm white threads that tasted wonderful when butter melted on them. I liked to push a chair to that table, clamber up, and look into that drawer.

The most fascinating of all those interesting objects were the knives – especially the big butcher knife. I could not keep my fingers away from its sharp edge. Mama did not allow me to play with knives but again and again I would pull the chair over, climb up, and open that mesmerizing drawer. I always thought that this time it would be different – I was so much bigger and older than last time – but I don’t remember a single successful exploration of that forbidden drawer. I always cut a finger.

That’s why I was glad to see sharp pointed leaves, like green butcher knives that did not cut my fingers, growing abundantly in Grandma Gray’s yard. Joyously shouting, “Butcher knives! Butcher knives!” I pulled up those harmless knives and threw them in the air. It was not long before Grandma investigated my happy cries and explained that those knives, too, must be left alone. They would grow and become flowers – “Flags”, she called them, but since then I’ve never been fond of iris.

MY FIRST WEDDING
Daddy’s younger brother, Lionel, was called Uncle Bunt. He carried me on his shoulders, tossed me in the air, and teased me sometimes. His wedding to Eva Derrick was the first I ever attended and was most memorable. I was three and wore my silver satin dress with fur around the neck and sleeves which cousin Betty had outgrown. When Arden, a second cousin, stood with me under the wedding bower in the living room, the minister came over and said some of the wedding ceremony over our heads. He ended with a pronouncement that we were man and wife. I rushed to Mama to ask in a whisper if I had really been married but she said it was only make-believe. I watched Arden carefully for several years to see whether any mystic change had taken place but that time, too, Mama was right - I wasn’t married.

BONNIE SAVES MY LIFE
Daddy borrowed Grandpa’s horses when he had to plow or harrow the fields. One, named Bonnie, was a big brownish-black workhorse with a white stripe on her face, who could make a team go straight and steady even if the other horses were stubborn. Bonnie was so gentle that Daddy let me ride on her back when he was harrowing the back field. Her back was so broad that my legs stuck almost straight out on both sides. I was wearing a beige dress that day – girls didn’t ever wear pants – when I tumbled off Bonnie’s wide back right in front of the teeth of the harrow. I thought I was dead for sure, but Bonnie stopped the team at once and held her up left back foot until Daddy rescued me. Looking up at that big hoof and the belly of the mare with the sharp teeth of the harrow so close, I thought Bonnie had made a miracle, but Daddy said I’d never been in danger. He trusted that horse completely.

BAPTISMS AND BURIALS
The big irrigation ditch came in from the Walla Walla River at the back of our place, passing alongside the apple orchards, chuckling behind the chicken house and the calf barn and flowing through a little wood that made a private place for the more sacred aspects of our play. We took turns baptizing each other in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost – at least Marjy and I did. Donna was never mature enough to conduct a service but was willing to be baptized whenever we decided to. Sometimes we sprinkled like the Methodists, sometimes we poured, and on summer days we immersed like the Baptists, but Marjy eventually felt this was sacrilegious and we had to stop. Marjy was always so good – so down-to-earth really good - and I loved her so much that I didn’t resent her even when my parents held her up as an example and asked, “Why can’t you be more like Marjory?”

Marjy didn’t object, though, to funerals for cats, no matter how holy we made them. I had bad luck with an orange kitten named Dandelion one summer. The service we gave him was so enjoyable that we dug him up three times one sunny afternoon, improving our choice of memory verses, hymns, and solemn remarks as we went along. We were all regulars at church and Sunday school, but none of us had attended a funeral and nobody we knew had died.


HIERARCHY IN THE HENHOUSE
There was no fence surrounding the henhouse so the chickens pecked around any place they pleased, all over the farm, eating worms in newly plowed ground, beetles grasshoppers, and green growing plants as well. Morning and night we called them, “Chickie, chickhickchick” in a chickeny king of tune, scattering corn – dried maize chucked from the cob – out of a bent tin bucket. The top hen was more conscious of her rank than the Queen of England (Queen Mary then, before Edward and Mrs. Simpson and King George, father of the present Queen Elizabeth). The top hen could peck any hen in the flock and not be pecked back, and so on down the line with the high status birds preceding the others into the same henhouse. There was plenty of time for the hen with lowest rank to run away and squat under the bushes to avoid being pecked by all the others. Feeding chickens was fun but gathering eggs was my job and I often collected more ire from my father than eggs from the nests.

THE MEAN ROOSTER
One of Grandpa Gray’s roosters had a naturally feisty nature not helped by the hired man pelting him with the little green apples he was thinning. The bird became a mean cock and would chase little girls, so Marjy, Donna, and I were afraid of him. We often didn’t dare leave the outhouse until a grown-up came, while the cock patrolled in front, back and forth, eyes alert for his prey. Grown-ups were inclined to laugh but Mama became the first grown-up to believe how mean that rooster was because once the rooster knocked Barbara down. She was smaller than the rooster and lay kicking and yelling with the rooster pulling on the hem of her dress. Mama kicked that rooster – I still remember the amazement I felt when the bird sailed over the icehouse! Finally, everybody except Grandpa realized that the rooster was a danger, but he just chuckled and shook his head. Then one day when Grandpa was carrying two full buckets of fresh milk up from the barn, the rooster ran at top speed into the back of Grandpa’s knees. He fell down, spilled the milk, and the family had chicken fricassee for Sunday dinner.