Does this ever happen to you? You get a cup of coffee (black coffee) when you get to work. You drink some coffee, get your eyes open and start working. Oops! Forgot about the coffee. Now there are about 2 drinks left in the cup and it is ice cold because your office temperature is around 47 degrees, Fahrenheit. Do you:

A.) Throw it in your trash can even though it still has some coffee in it and will leak everywhere and the janitor will stop taking your trash for you

B.) Wait until you get up and dump the rest in the sink before throwing the cup away

C.) Just chug down the cold coffee because you are too lazy to get up but you can't stand having clutter on your desk. It almost makes you gag everytime, and you know this, but you do it anyway.

Gee, can you guess which one I choose?

 

What the others might have found to be hillbilly, backward or old fashioned, I found to be beautiful, spectacular and worth its weight in gold. I found myself hoping my children would meet them, remember them and someday grow to be like them when I think I knew they would not. The best I could do, if I was lucky, was to become like them myself and therefore others might know them through me long after they were gone. I could visit and talk and read with them but the best thing was to listen. That's when the old stories and the advice would come flowing out in a river-in whole chunks and small bits of wisdom, and even genius, which I could cling to.

They were not fancy people. They were not rich though most of us believed that through their years of living with a dust bowl mindset they had probably saved hundreds of thousands. Maybe someday we would know and it would be passed out to our vulture- like claws so that we could buy something shiny which none of us would need. I rather liked to think that, not trusting a bank anymore, they would bury the money in a coffee can out on one of the countless acres and no one would find it. Or, someone who knew what to do would find it and spend it in just the right way to honor them. I never hoped that person would be me as I don't trust myself with a responsibility so great. If I was the reason their years of hard work and saving was lost, I knew I would never recover.

For myself I hoped instead to someday get the house that my grandfather and his sons had all built together in the seventies. The house that was just down the hill from the old place my dad grew up in. The place with the old barn and the fruitful garden and a creek for young ones to get muddy in. The house held together with rocks and stones from the very ground they built it on and the place where my aunt was married. It had a pond, too, that my grandpa dug and always called the "sand pit". You drove right past it when you pulled off the dirt road to drive up to the house. Yes, that's what I secretly hoped for. And I hoped that it would never be sold but handed down from generation to generation until Jesus came back. It was a place with roots and a history so strong that you could still feel the family all around you no matter if they were there in body or not. I knew that we could not be like other families who had to sell the place one day to pay for nursing home care and medical bills. I could not let that happen. Whatever I did, whatever or whomever I had to give up, I would stay with them in that place. I would go to them if they needed me because they would have and did do that for all of us.

 

They were kind and soft-hearted but strong and so wise. They were uneducated but smart. He was as sharp as the pain he felt in his left shoulder when the weather was cold. He was impossible to win against in an argument or a game of dominoes. He could calculate each players hand and use it against them. He cried when he saw Feed the Children commercials or read a story of heart break. He didn't believe in money, toll booths, divorce, gambling or booze. Neither of them did. He kept a record of every deer he ever killed and he got five just this last fall. He was a guitar player and a song writer. He was as stubborn as the stains on his worn out clothes but he was usually right anyway. He wrote her a love poem for their 50th anniversary.

 

She was sweet and loving but she would stand her ground. She was a strong Christian influence and a quiet rock. Her voice was high and loud when she was telling something funny, which was often. They both laughed a lot. She sang gospel songs like "Amazing Grace" and "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" all day long. She was scared of swimming and wild horses. She loved to do a puzzle and could make a delicious soup from anything. They both liked to read and she would buy boxes of books at yard sales and then pass the good ones on to me.

Shorty was a great dog. When I say "great", I don't mean grand or beautiful or strong. He was just a great dog. We got him when I was eight. He was supposed to be my brother's fifth birthday present but I always thought I bonded more with Shorty than my brother did. Maybe because I named him. Maybe because I'm the one that was holding him when he jumped out of my lap (I was sitting in the door way of the storage building) and broke his leg. I think it was my fault because I tried to catch him and probably just tripped him up. Mom took him to the vet and dropped him off to be examined. When she came back, there was a cast on it. She would have never authorized having a cast put on, mostly because she knew Dad would have a fit. Luckily for Shorty (and for me) the vet didn't consult Mom. She made us promise not to tell Dad how much it cost.

He was also supposed to be a full blood Chihuahua. He was given to us by someone who had found him as a stray puppy. As he grew, it became apparent he was not a full blood Chihuahua. He was colored like a pug-fawn with a darker strip down the back. He was never accused of being pretty. He was smart though. One little oopsie in the house and he was potty trained. He liked to play when he was a puppy. He would latch his little teeth onto my night shirts and let me pull him around the room. He liked to play fetch and tug of war with dirty socks.

My parents got divorced when I was nine. Shorty was my Batman Light (refer to Van Marsalis' song, Batman Light). He was with me when I wanted to cry. He would just curl up right beside me and let me hug him. He moved to Purcell with us. I loved him so much. He was so smart. One time I was lying on the floor watching t.v. with my head resting on my arm, palm up, stretched out above my head. I felt something in my hand and when I looked, Shorty had dropped a toy ball right in the middle of my hand. I couldn't say no.

As Shorty aged, he stopped playing with toys. He became too mature for that. I would like to now convey how truly special Shorty was. In my mind, he wasn't a dog. But not in the way that other people have dogs who are their "babies". Shorty was much more like a little man. He didn't like to be picked up and carried around. He didn't like to be cuddled. It would seem almost ridiculous to baby talk him. Almost insulting. You never had to get on to him or give him direction and guidance the way you do most dogs. He was like a friend. He liked to sit and be petted and enjoyed human companionship.

His vocabulary was astounding. He knew more English than some people. People outside my family always made fun of the way I talked to Shorty in regular sentences. They didn't believe that he could understand me until I showed them. He started losing his hearing probably about six months ago. I often wondered if he wondered why no one talked to him anymore. I hope not. I still talked to him even if he couldn't hear. I'm not an idiot. I know that he was actually a dog. But remember, he was a great dog.