OLIVE TWIST ©2012
This is where I will post written portraits of family members and other people. Some of them will have visuals and others may not, because I don’t have many photographs.
Names have been changed as deemed necessary to protect the innocent (especially me) from the villains, but all of the stories are true to the best of my recollection. Thank you for reading!
“Sister Olive”
~♥~
PORTRAIT OF POPPY
Here is a recent sketch that my son drew of my father, and I wanted to share it with my readers. I am very pleased with how well it turned out. My son is becoming an amazing artist!
~♥~
LITTLE HORSE
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Many years ago, my sister Margaret and I used to look for reflections of ourselves in fairy tales. We particularly liked to pretend that we were “Snow White and Rose Red” from the Grimm fairy tale, because we found the illustrations and descriptions of the two sisters to be pretty accurate. I was Snow White, in case you are wondering.
My half sister Heidi wrote an award-winning essay about Margaret and me when she was in grade school, contrasting our personalities and tastes. The only thing Margaret and I hold in common is art, but our styles are completely different. Her drawings and paintings are hollow and terrifying with dismembered bodies and wicked eyes that seem to follow you around the house. My art is full of angels and doves and clouds and light and radiance. It is a mystery to me how we could be so different, like polar opposites.
Because Margaret and I are both emotionally scarred, we have never been close and sometimes our relationship has been strained to the point of cracking. As a teenager in San Jose before I moved to Florida, I bullied her in my days of rage. But after I was away from her for a couple of years, she grew much taller than me and her feet blossomed to size eleven, and she could have demolished me. Luckily, by then I had become a pacifist and a Quaker, so there was no occasion for her to hurt me.
~
Margaret and I reunited for a short time when we were teenagers, and we lived in a small trailer in the woods in Gainesville. She was so messy that I was about to go crazy, and so was she because I was so tidy. This living arrangement did not work out because we were both so independent and unique in our own way. She also kept trying to steal the hearts of men that loved me, and it didn’t enhance our relationship.
~
My grandfather called her the “Aborigine woman”, because she was tall and fearless and outspoken. Her boyfriends were often quite intimidated and would ask her what was wrong with her, and she would say proudly, “I was brought up in a household of women” (referring to Mother and our half sisters).
Margaret got angry once and hurled a lecherous man into the corner of the Quaker meeting house, and he crumpled there as the people were praying. Those saintly people all lifted their heads when they heard the thud of his body against the wall, then turned and looked and bowed their heads again politely. The slobbery man with his moldy green teeth learned his lesson about stalking my sister.
~
My half-sister Heidi told me a hilarious story about Margaret recently. She said she had needed transportation once while her car was in the shop, so she called Margaret to come and drive her somewhere. Margaret drove down from her little house way up on the mountain near Yosemite in an old beaten up pickup truck. She was wearing overalls and had a case of beer on the floor by the front passenger seat. She had popped open a can of beer and was chugging on it when Heidi came out of the house to meet her. They talked for a few minutes before driving away, so that Margaret could finish her drink. She told Heidi, “When I lived in the orphanage in North Carolina, I had a roommate who fantasized about growing up and marrying a military man. She told me that every Southern girl should get hooked up with a soldier. Well, I’m sure glad I got out of that place before I turned into a redneck.”
Heidi and I began to laugh and she said, “There she was sitting in her old pickup wearing overalls and drinking beer. I don’t think she got out of North Carolina in time.”
~
My sister visited our father in Spain a number of years ago, and he recounts a hilarious incident to me. He and Margaret were in the pub and they overheard a fellow talking about being a wrestling champion. My sister approached the man and challenged him to a fight. He kept refusing and my sister kept insisting. My father says he turned away for a second then looked again, and Margaret had the man pinned down on the floor. How humiliating that must have been for the champion!
In Mallorca, the natives would give names to people based on their appearance and demeanor like the Native Americans did. Margaret was aptly named “Little Horse” because she was always galloping up and down the streets in her boots, tall and strong and elegant.
Here is a poem that Margaret wrote many years ago for one of her sweethearts, and gave to me:
You gave to me a coffin
that windows and doors hid in
and though we’d be together,
The light could not come in.
You said that I could bend my wings
and lower my head to be
inside of you, inside the grave,
and the coffin you gave to me.
~
Margaret’s poetry is a lot like her art. Death always seems to be stalking around in it. But evidently this man caused her to feel confined and suffocated. In this one attribute, my sister and I can really relate to each other. While our taste in men has always been totally different, we both have always needed a lot of space and freedom in order to keep some measure of sanity. We don’t enjoy feeling like a possession of someone else. Men hurt us a lot when we were very young, and it’s still hard to cope with those feelings.
~
Once while I was in California to visit my family, Margaret told me about the Novitiate of the Sacred Heart in Los Gatos, and how peaceful it is to watch the monks working in the vineyards, and to walk through the fields of flax. So we decided to hitchhike there together.
We were wild in those days, and some animal power always took hold of us when we found ourselves in secluded places. We stepped lightly through the meadows with lovely statues of Mary and little shrines all along the path. We meandered until we came to that amazing field of light coffee-colored flax sweeping the warm breezes.
We strayed from the path and walked into the field until we could hear voices but could not see anyone. It was so calm. We sat down in the field and listened to the quietude.
Suddenly we realized that we were all alone, and no one could see us. We took off all of our clothes and sunned ourselves and giggled and scrutinized each other’s bodies. It was strange and awkward as sisters to behold each other in the nude. I don’t know that this had happened since we were children. I remember sort of comparing my body with hers, wondering who was better to look at and lay with. I believe I concluded that it was a matter of taste.
While we were talking and laughing, we heard voices and footsteps on the path, followed by a dead silence. We realized someone must have heard us and we were naked. There weren’t any convenient fig leaves. Margaret whispered to me to be very still. We waited silently until the voices resumed and then chuckled about how we could cause some poor monk to have a heart attack, so we got dressed in a hurry. Can you imagine how surprised one might have been to find two beautiful wood nymphs out there frolicking in the sacred fields? It still strikes me as odd that we wanted to undress while we were on hallowed ground like that. But that is how it was in Eden.
As I write this, I have to laugh and shake my head. How many people can say they lounged around naked in a monastery?
~
That day lingers in my memory as one of the most beautiful days that I ever shared with my sister, and in such a mystical place. I wondered what it would be like to live in a monastery, to be completely surrendered to the will of God, to be engulfed in silence and beauty and grace every day, every hour. I sometimes feel that I was meant to be a nun, but my life was too cluttered by the time I realized it.
(Picture from Wikipedia)
♥
TRIPPING WITH POPPY
(From Part II of Memoirs)
In the midst of this time of total confusion, my father appeared one day at Isabel’s house. I have no idea how he found me. He had come to live in Tampa for awhile, to save some money and return to Spain. He drove to Gainesville where I was living, and stayed at the home of one of his writer friends called Grasshopper.
The first day of our visit, my father purchased some LSD for himself and me. After we were “tripping” heavily, he began to ramble and agonize about what a terrible father he had been and how I should hate him for it. He asked me not to call him “Daddy” and suggested I call him by his first name. But I wanted someone to call Daddy. Today I call him “Poppy” because he is toxic in many ways.
I was ready for his visit to end very soon after it began, because It was only reopening wounds. He made the mistake of asking me this question: “If you had never known me and I was not your father and we just met, would you like me?”
“No, I wouldn’t.” I replied quickly, and he was crestfallen. He thought he was so charming and it shocked him.
I also recall one crazy day with his eccentric friend in an old Victorian house. There were giant posters of the frightful genius faces of Einstein, Castro, and Beethoven on the walls, and a creepy picture on a closet door from the cover of a book called And Then There Were None. Grasshopper sang a spooky song by Ewan MacColl about a warlock who loved a beautiful maiden: “Oh are ye sleeping Maggie? Let me in, for oh the wind is roaring at the warlock craggy.” That day was turning into one bad trip. I had to get out of that house and into the sunshine before his dark sinister voice twisted up my brains into spaghetti on his fork. I walked out silently and drifted slowly back to Isabel’s place.
My father showed up again the next day and was accompanied by a woman named Petunia who wielded a guitar. She had written a song for me called “Sad Lisa.” After my father introduced us, she began to strum and sing:
This is sad Lisa so quiet and still.
She sits on a rock on a snow-covered hill.
The sun is so bright, but her eyes open stare,
And she isn’t bothered by cold wind in her hair.
One set of footprints from her favorite spot
Leads back to four walls and flat little cot.
The rest of the orphans are watching TV.
Sad Lisa reads a three-hundred-page fantasy.
She ties tiny knots and strings pretty beads.
She buys them instead of the Sunday movies.
The teenage girls still like to play.
Sad Lisa stays in the library.
Lisa is painting with oils in her sleep.
The rest of the orphans moan and weep.
She dreams of a white light that guides her way,
And works in her watercolors all the next day.
Sad Lisa is leaving the orphanage soon,
Cause on Saturdays she doesn’t sleep ‘til noon.
Can’t laugh with a dormant soul grieving within,
Sad Lisa and her busy hands now begin.
The part about the white light surprised me because I often had dreams and visions. My father laughed and said, “I’ve got you pegged, don’t I?” I nodded and smiled.
A few days after that, James and Margaret decided to surprise us both by showing up from California. The three of us looked at each other in amazement, because we had all grown so much. My sister had outgrown me in stature and chest size and her feet were a lot bigger than mine. When my sister twisted a small spray of her hair under her nose, she and James and my father looked exactly alike. They all had dark hair and eyes. I alone was alien with my blonde hair and blue eyes.
The four of us drove around town in our father’s rental van and talked. I recall my father at the wheel and my brother giving him directions. Whenever we approached an intersection and my brother said, “Go straight,” my father would shout “Never!” and turn any direction that he could. We laughed and laughed and my brother starting saying “Go forward” instead.
After our few days together in Gainesville, my father had a crazy impulse to drive with us to California and see my mother. All of us were ready for some mischief. So we embarked upon another kind of trip. He left his third wife alone in Tampa without an explanation. I still can’t believe he did that.
The last time I saw Katy was in front of Isabel’s house when the four of us were driving away in a van with darkened windows. I rolled down the window and reached my hand out to grasp hers and she was weeping like she would never recover, and I was trying to tell her I would return.
My family had not invited her and I didn’t feel that I could ask. I needed to be with my father. I know that it wounded her deeply and it hurt me too. I never heard from Katy again, although I placed many phone calls and wrote many letters to her. It was a great loss to me.
During our westward journey, my father decided he would give my sister a crash course in driving on the interstate in the middle of the night. I had a prayer-a-thon in the back seat after I heard him shouting, “Margaret, you’re in the wrong f—king lane with a semi-truck coming straight at us! Get over!”
We miraculously arrived at our mother’s house in San Jose, and my father remarked that it looked more like a dovecote. My mother was just returning from work and pulled up in a big white camper. She was all dressed in lavender as is her tradition, with the lavender bandana around her long golden hair, and a lacey lavender blouse, and a purple ring on her finger. It gave me great satisfaction to see a family member who resembled me.
First my mother glanced at James and Margaret and me. Then she saw my father. As soon as she recognized him, her eyes were like knives stabbing him. She didn’t want him to go in her house, but we prodded her to let him in. She gave in, but her demeanor never changed.
When he asked about taking all of us somewhere to eat dinner, she quickly recommended the most expensive place in town, and when we got there, she recommended the highest price menu items to each one of us. She wanted him to make up for our whole lives with no child support.
My brother had brought a camera and wanted a photo of our parents after we left the restaurant. I still have the photo of my father grinning with no shirt on and a white shell necklace around his bronze neck, and my mother looking sadly into the camera as she stood next to him in her light blue peasant dress. They both posed just for the children who had not seen them together since the early sixties.
At that moment, I took one long deep breath. My home that had been whipped around by tornadoes and storm clouds made a peaceful landing just for a second at the end of the rainbow.
It still makes me laugh when I see that photo, and think of how uncomfortable we made the two of them. Perhaps they both deserved it.
The whole time with my father was crazy and I was relieved when he went back to Tampa to his wife. Of course, she promptly filed for a divorce. He returned to Spain soon thereafter and found himself a new woman who shared his interest in chamber music, and they lived happily ever after.
I returned to Gainesville. Katy was gone but my other friends were still there.
~♥~
DREAMING OF GRANDDADDY
“I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” John 14:18
Throughout my wild days, Granddaddy tried to give me advice and encouragement. He was delighted when I finally decided to get my high school equivalency and go to college in Oregon after years on the streets. He helped me pay my expenses when I was in college, and encouraged me to build happiness and success in my life.
When I arrived in Newberg that year in late October, the ground was still dusty with Mount St. Helen’s ash. The volcano had erupted about a week earlier, and a white wisp of smoke like the one that hung over my grandfather’s pipe was still visible on the horizon.
My boots sounded like lucky horseshoes on the sidewalk as I approached my new dwelling place. The little green cottage was small and quaint and chickadees were hopping upon the roof. I climbed the grey stone steps of North Street House and walked under the arch and through a dark mahogany door. I crossed the threshold to my new life, on a crisp and chilly autumnal afternoon.
I saw a warm room with a golden glowing fireplace already lit. Sitting on an unfamiliar soft red chair, I slipped off my tall leather boots. I was on hallowed ground. All things had become new. I looked out the window and saw that snow had begun falling! I had not seen snow in many years, so I dashed outside in my socks to feel it falling on me, purifying me.
~
When I was engaged to a Quaker baker in Oregon and I asked Granddaddy to come and “give me away” at our wedding, he brought his finest black suit with the star sapphire buttons. He looked very distinguished holding his black cane with silver tips, and wearing dark glasses because of partial blindness. As we walked down the aisle, he told me to slow down so everyone would have to stare at me longer, to hold my chin up and look around and smile at everyone. He spoke softly, “You are gorgeous and smart, and you deserve respect. Don’t let anyone ever put you down. Do you hear me? Don’t ever let anyone take away your dignity. You have earned your respect. You’re beautiful, baby…” He seemed to perceive that I would need a lot of self-confidence in this marriage and that trouble was looming in my future.
During my honeymoon, I became pregnant with my first son, and I was amazed because throughout my wildest years, I never took birth control and never got pregnant! By divine providence, I was given a child at the right time.
Granddaddy wrote to me when I named my first son after him. He always printed in giant black capital letters with magic markers because he was almost blind. There were grey smudged teardrop stains all over his letter. I had seen those smudges one other time, when my cousin Thomas was killed. Granddaddy’s tears didn’t flow easily. But he wrote that he felt deeply honored that I had named my oldest son after him.
My three sons were his only great-grandchildren, and he was dreadfully proud of them. He tried to encourage my siblings to get married and have children, but I can’t really blame them for not doing it.
Granddaddy knew that my in-laws looked down on me because of my former lifestyle, and that they did not accept me. But he always encouraged me, and praised me for getting married and giving him great-grandchildren. Once he said that he felt like coming to Oregon and buying the homesteads and farms that belonged to my in-laws, for my sake, because they insulted me and hurt me.
~
When my oldest son was seven years old, my grandfather was admitted to Queens Hospital in Honolulu, and I called his room to talk to him. He explained gently that he was having heart and kidney failure. The doctor had told him that he needed dialysis, but that if he accepted treatments, his heart might become overstressed. If he didn’t have dialysis, his kidneys could fail and he could die then as well. He chose to have the dialysis.
I called him the day after his treatments started, and he was struggling to remember my sons’ names as we talked. His voice was very weak. It was almost Christmas, and he was rambling, “Hello, Olive. Hello, uh, James. Hello…..Zeke. Hello, what is it? Oh that’s it, Noah! Hello, this is your old white-haired grandfather who looks like Santa Claus. Ho-ho-ho! Merry Christmas!”
Then I heard his wife’s voice telling him to rest now, and she took the phone and she sounded very distraught. She and I talked briefly.
I called the next day, and there was no answer in his room. Then my mother called to tell me in a quivering voice that Granddaddy was gone. I hung up the phone in my kitchen, and turned around to tell my husband. He asked me when my grandfather’s will would be read. He didn’t hug me or ask me if I was all right. I ran into my room filled with rage and sorrow, and cried.
Margaret was crushed because she didn’t know he was that sick. Granddaddy was never a complainer and he always downplayed everything. I hadn’t really known he was dying either, but I was deeply touched that he worked so hard to remember and speak all of our names on his last day on Earth.
~
James and Margaret and I felt orphaned when we were young. After Granddaddy died, we felt orphaned again. James had been adopted by him, so it affected him even more deeply. When Granddaddy’s wife died, James kept crying, “My mother is dead!” at the funeral. Our real mother was present and heard him, and she was crushed.
After it was all over, it occurred to my brother that he still had another father. And another mother. Someday we will all feel orphaned for the third time.
My brother has had two fathers, two mothers, and two sets of siblings. He still doesn’t know who he is. He is like a puzzle piece trying to figure out where he fits in.
~
Recently, I dreamed that there was a knock on the door while I was sitting at my desk. My oldest son James answered the door, and called out to me, “Mom, our father is here.” I walked to the living room and was startled to see my grandfather standing in the doorway. He was wearing a grey suit and hat, and his eyes were glowing with a gentle and peaceful light.
“Granddaddy, I’ve missed you so much!” I cried and ran into his arms. He hugged me, and said, “I know”. I wept as he embraced me, and neither of us spoke another word.
I awoke and felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in my room.
I thought about my eldest son calling him “our father” in the dream, and I realized that he had been a father to his own children, his adoptive children, to his grandchildren (including me), and even to his my sons in many ways. He always tried to fill the gap for those who didn’t meet their responsibilities. Granddaddy was always there.
♥
THE STREET CHILD: A SELF-PORTRAIT
There was once a girl who lived on the streets. She had quit school at the age of thirteen. She lived in Florida where it was hot and sultry most of the year. She always seemed to be sweating and exhausted. Her long flax-colored hair was tangled and sweaty, and her skin was warm and tan from the sun. Her jeans were covered with hand-sewn patches of various shapes and colors. She loved tie-dye and shades of purple. Sometimes she wore a tapestry headband or a bandana around her brow. She was very thin and sometimes felt very weak and shaky from hunger and hangovers. She stood on street corners asking for money, so that she could buy a bowl of rice and a cup of tea at the natural foods restaurant nearby. Sometimes the pretty waitress with dimpled cheeks there would give her some free bread crusts or a piece of carrot cake that had crumbled and could not be sold.
The girl had large wilting blue eyes, which blazed wildly from the drugs she was taking. Her friend had an apartment next door to a drug dealer who knew that she liked LSD and mescaline. He needed someone to try out his samples before he bought very much of it, so she would try them out for him. The drugs seemed to carry her like a feather into the wind, and her senses were awakened in other worlds where she thought perhaps she could find God or a white light or something that would make sense of her existence. She was hurt very deeply, as if a thorn was in her that she couldn’t dig out.
She was often hungry and wandering and hitchhiking to other states. Once she had been picked up by an old redneck farmer with a Southern accent who raped her and left her by the side of the highway in the cold winter. She was thankful to be alive. She always seemed to be in some kind of danger, but she didn’t seem to value her life very much.
She was taken in by men from time to time who gave her food and slept with her and used her. Many times she didn’t even know their names, and she would wake up the next morning and find that they were gone. She fell in love a couple of times, but she found out she was only a toy, and her heart broke like a porcelain doll. Then she decided to avenge herself, and when men loved her, she played with their minds as if they were marionettes and sometimes had three or four of them dancing in her hand at one time. She enjoyed watching them suffer on her account, until they grew weary of it and gave up on her. She had become prettier and more experienced and knew how to lure them.
She loved fairy tales with happy paradoxical endings, and medieval style art. She always had a little bottle of ink and a quill pen and a little sketch book with her and she would sit on a park bench or in the grass against a tree and draw. She would recite this poem as she scribbled:
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth
And laid them away in a box of gold
Where long shall cling the lips of the moth
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth.
I hide no hate, I am not even wroth
Who found the earth’s breath so keen, so cold
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth
And laid them away in a box of gold.
She drew angels and gentle hands and faces of ethereal people she never met, and magical trees and flowers and birds she never saw. She often sketched cities and forests and lovely places that she imagined existed somewhere outside of her grasp. At one point, someone gave her a little lavender bicycle with a basket and she put her art supplies in the basket when she rode around town. It was nicer than walking in the heat, but someone stole her sketch book out of the basket and eventually her bicycle was taken as well.
She sometimes felt that someone she had once known was calling to her, someone who truly loved her. In one instance, she was lying on the grass in the park and she had a vision that she was standing at the foot of a gigantic wooden cross that reached into the clouds. She was trying to see the top of it, when suddenly she felt something wet and warm like summer rain falling on her. She held out her hands and looked at them, and they were covered with large drops of blood. She could not see the one on the cross because the clouds were shrouding him in the sky. But she suddenly realized that the blood was for her in particular, that she caused the death of the one who was bleeding. She knew that his pain was even greater than her own.
She dreamed once that she was walking through the snow in a long white dress and that she was wounded somehow, and the blood was flowing onto her white dress and dripping in the snow. She wondered if it meant that someday she would give her life to the one who gave his life for her.
Another time, she dreamed that she was wandering through a huge city and did not know where she was. She was filthy and barefoot, and she wandered into a huge building with green glass windows. The polished marble floors were cold under her feet. As she walked in, she saw people staring at her with disgusted looks and hatred, but she ignored them and went straight to the elevator. She pressed the button to go to the top, but she didn’t know why. When the bell rang and the door opened, she stepped in, and the door shut again. Then she realized she wasn’t alone. A man with a long white linen robe was looking at her. Tears were gathering around his eyes as he searched her face. She tried to look at the floor, but she could still feel his eyes upon her. No one had ever looked at her like that. She felt filthy and pitiful, but she felt his love burning a hole in her chest. She woke up before the elevator got to the top floor. She never forgot about the man who loved her and wept for her.
This young girl was constantly overshadowed by trouble but always felt someone calling to her on the inside. She heard him and felt his presence many times, and she loved him but was afraid of him at the same time. She knew that one day, she would have to give in to him, but she was still bitter and angry at the world and wanted to lash out.
You may wonder how I know this girl so well. It is because that little ragged girl was me. I can still see her in my mind’s eye, and she will always live inside of me.
I finally became acquainted with the One who kept calling me, and realized that I am His daughter, and He has always loved me since the beginning. Even more amazingly, He is a King and I am an heir to everything that belongs to Him, so I no longer have to live in pain and sorrow over the things that happened to me. He has established His covenant with me, and has placed a Comforter and Counselor inside of me, so that I can always have joy and peace within, no matter what my circumstances are.
(Note: Poem by Countee Cullen)
♥
MY OWN GUARDIAN ANGEL
“…Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee.” Acts 3:6
It seemed to me that Evelyn was always elderly because she had been grey-haired as long as I had known her. Yet she was one of the most energetic and conscientious people I have ever met. She had large open hands that always seemed to be giving, and large sandaled feet that never were idle. She looked after lost and troubled people that no one else wanted to be bothered with. I was one of those people.
I met Evelyn at the orphanage in Charlotte when I was about eleven years old. She came with my mother to visit my sister Margaret and me. She had been a friend of my mother, someone who tried to help her when she was struggling.
I met her again in Gainesville, Florida when we were returned to our mother’s custody. She had attended the Quaker meeting with my mother for several years, and my younger half-siblings had stayed with Evelyn at times while I was in the orphanage.
My mother decided to take all of us to San Jose to start a new life, but I started running away from home after we got there. So when I was thirteen, my mother sent me back to Gainesville and called Evelyn to look after me. I arrived at the Greyhound bus depot after a few miserable days of travel and Evelyn met me there.
We drove together in her old red Volkswagen van full of old scratching dogs, and she offered me a little bedroom with a sliding wooden door in her trailer and something to eat. She told me that she would enroll me in school the following day, and she did.
Whenever I felt like going, I would wander listlessly off to school in ragged patched up clothes with no shoes on, and I refused to cooperate with teachers. I started hanging out with people on the streets and drinking and taking drugs.
Evelyn grew weary of receiving phone calls from the school, and finally realized it was futile to force me to go. She said, “We are wasting everyone’s time sending you to school because you don’t want to be there. So do whatever you wish, and I will be here if you need me.” No one had ever released me like that. I was completely wild and uncontrollable, and she had the wisdom to see that her interference would only prolong my suffering.
So she stood aside and watched me suffer every imaginable torment, and let me know that she was always there, no matter what time of day or night it was. I spent many nights sleeping in abandoned houses, under bridges, in the homes of strange men, and in cars and vans. I experimented with all kinds of drugs, and often visited Evelyn while I was “stoned” or having bad “trips.” She could always tell and would shake her head in horror and quietly make me a peanut butter sandwich, saying, “Let’s just get something in your stomach.”
I hitchhiked across the country numerous times, and put myself in gravely dangerous situations. Once I was picked up as a runaway and I escaped, and was being sought by the police. I called Evelyn on the phone and she said the police had been at her place looking for me. She asked me not to tell her where I was, because she didn’t want to have to lie to the authorities. But she asked me if I needed any food or money. I laughed about this afterward, wondering how she could give me anything without knowing my whereabouts.
Evelyn always expressed deep concern and pain over what was happening to me, but she knew not to try to exercise any kind of authority over me. She always invited me to attend Quaker Meeting with her. I still can’t believe that she she didn’t just give up, and walk away from the whole situation. She took responsibility for me as if I was her own, but she didn’t have to. My mother must have known that Evelyn was persistent.
When I was sixteen or seventeen, and began to be a “seeker” of spiritual things, I found Evelyn to be a seemingly endless well of wisdom and truth. She had tremendous knowledge of world religions, and gave me a huge book called The Bible of Mankind which I treasured. It contained history and scriptures from a variety of religions, both well-known and obscure. I studied this book intensively. She taught me to think for myself and make my own decisions.
Evelyn was also a political activist, and she took up any cause which pricked her conscience with concern, such as protesting the Vietnam War. She taught me about social consciousness, particularly that if anyone is hurting or suffering wrongfully, all of us are hurt by it. She stood up for those who needed support, and willingly got into trouble for it.
One sweltering hot summer day, I drove with her to buy drinks and snacks for a crowd of anti-war protesters who had been standing out in the heat for hours. When we arrived at the site of the protest in her big red Volkswagen van, police were blocking off the area, and they told Evelyn to leave. She said “I just want to bring cold drinks and cookies to those poor kids who are demonstrating out in the hot sun.”
The officer looked at her with a puzzled look and said “Lady, if you don’t leave, I’m going to have to give you a ticket.”
Evelyn clicked her tongue and said, “Just go ahead and be done with it! I’m going in there!” The officer let out a heavy sigh and gave up, so she drove in to feed the multitude.
She also brought me with her when she visited the psychiatric ward at the Veteran’s Hospital. She went there to encourage and befriend soldiers who had been traumatized by their experiences. I had been given a guitar when I was about fourteen by a friend, and had learned many songs from other street people. Evelyn would ask me to bring my guitar and sing for the soldiers, and they always seemed to enjoy that.
Evelyn got married to a strange fellow with a pipe in his mouth, a great furry stomach and a growling voice, and he despised me and named me “Trouble.” Whenever he opened the door and saw me standing there, he would call out, “Evelyn, Trouble’s here,” with a frown on his face. But she would remind him that Jesus always loved and helped people in need, and that he should not be so selfish. I strongly suspected that she married him out of pity because he was so alone and had personality disorders. He and I were like two cuts of the same damaged fabric in her sewing box. She always wanted to mend everyone with torn hearts.
One Christmas Eve, Evelyn drove around to the bars, and she invited people to her home to sit around the Christmas tree and drink hot chocolate. I waited outside as she ran in, and a few lonely people actually accepted.
She was not a wealthy person. She lived on a very meager Social Security check, and her home was a very simple trailer. And yet, whenever I called her on the phone, she always asked me, “Do you need a place to stay tonight? Do you need something to eat?” She was truly a guardian angel for me during the most reckless and crazy times in my life.
After her husband passed away, Evelyn moved to Maryland to be closer to her children. The last time I saw her, my three young sons were with me and she was in a wheelchair. Evelyn had become quite frail, but her wit was just as sharp as ever. I tried to give her a gift, and she said, “This is not the time in my life to accumulate things. It is the time to give things away.”
She continued to write long philosophical letters to me for quite some time. Then the letters stopped and I became worried, so I called her daughter’s house. She explained to me that Evelyn had become very confused and forgetful and the family had decided to place her in a nursing home. Her daughter said she was certain that Evelyn wouldn’t know me anymore. But I requested the phone number for the care home anyway, and one of the nurses rang Evelyn’s room. She answered the phone, and I was astonished when she remembered me instantly.
“Olive! Do you need a place to stay? Can I give you something to eat?” She spoke to me in the same worried tone as when I was a teenager.
“No, Evelyn, I’m okay,” I said. Then I almost wept.
In her mind, I was still the ragged and tormented young girl who lived daily on the brink of disaster.
“And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.” Matthew 10:42
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♥
THE DANCING FOOL
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.” (from the 23rd Psalm of David)
I remember the sound of his whimsical flute which seemed to call my name- Jennifer Juniper lives upon the hill. Jennifer Juniper sitting very still... He would stand at the end of the sidewalk playing until I opened the door of Isabel’s apartment. “Magical princess, would you like to come out and play?” he would ask.
My hair had just begun to sprout again when we met. I was sixteen and he was twenty years old, I believe. As I sat in the park at the University of Florida he strolled by on that first day and I asked him, “Do you have the time?”
“Yes,” he said, and sat down.
It took me a minute to grasp his joke, and I laughed. We talked for awhile and then he drew a bamboo reed out of his green backpack and began to play.
~
A few days later I was sitting in the park with my bare feet in the morning dew and the notes of his flute danced toward me through the fog. I caught a glimpse of a dark-haired young man sitting on a woven Native American rug. The man rose and strolled towards me with a small handful of colorful wildflowers and offered them to me. He sat on the wet grass, crossed his legs, and said “Good morning, magical princess!” I realized it was the same fellow and again we began to talk. He told me that his name was Zachariah.
I told him I admired his name and he explained that he was not born with it. He had been walking one day when a newspaper was blown by the wind against his leg. He picked it up and saw an obituary column. A boy had died when he was less than a year old and his name had been “Zachariah Zarathustra Jones.” The name was too beautiful to waste so he had decided to use it.
Zachariah had striking blue eyes, dark brown scruffy hair and a thin scraggly little beard. He was deeply tan and fit and wore shorts most of the time with no shirt or shoes; he carried a green canvas backpack that was always loaded with fruit and nuts that he would share with me.
He was a professor’s assistant in the math department at the University. He brought me to his office one day and showed me that he had a giant photo of me on the wall- I was completely bald and wore a ring in my left nostril. I laughed and asked him where he found it, and he said he had seen it in a photography exhibit and had requested it from the photographer after the show. He explained that he had wanted to meet me for a long time before he had the nerve to talk to me.
~
I loved the spontaneity of our friendship and the freedom I felt with him. We were playmates in the truest sense of the word. I spent many wonderful days with him, lying in fields of clover, wandering through the botanical gardens and out to the long wooden pier where we saw cattails and osprey and alligators sliding into the water.
We laughed a lot when we were together. One Sunday morning we tried to thumb a ride from a wooded area in Archer into Gainesville and no one would pick us up. In the sweltering heat we trudged along in the grass by the road and hoped for a kind driver to pick us up. Zack suggested that we try using our big toes instead of our thumbs. We tried that for awhile, and we laughed out loud as drivers slowed down for a closer look through the darkened windows of their air-conditioned cars.
“I wonder where they are all going,” I asked.
“They are off to church to hear a sermon about the Good Samaritan,” Zachariah replied. Then we laughed and laughed about that.
We had noticed before that Sunday was a terrible day for hitchhiking and we thought perhaps it was because people were wearing their best clothes and driving their finest cars to church. But I’m sure we looked pretty weird too.
~
Zachariah was the one who first named me “The Magical Princess of Love.” He would tell people that he loved me and thought I grew more beautiful every day. Yet I always knew that I was safe with Zachariah, that there would be no sex or commitments, only a remarkable intertwining of our souls. He wrote many stories and poems in my honor and brought me gifts for every occasion he could think of. One day, he gave me a tiny bottle of rose oil, and said, “Happy un-birthday, magical princess!”
Zack always sang the songs of Donovan and played them on his flute. He gave me an album called “Gift from a Flower to a Garden” that I still love today. I can still envision him dancing and playing his bamboo reed when I hear those songs.
~
The giving of names was customary among friends in those days, either as recognition of certain attributes, or as a token of affection and high regard- or both. Zack always played his joyful flute and danced like Jethro Tull, so a wizard named Gandalf called him “The Dancing Fool.”
But I named my dearest friend “Rabbit” because he reminded me of a brown rabbit dancing in the meadow in the spring.
He was concerned only for me and my happiness, and he would get very upset when other men would try to use me for their pleasure. Rabbit comforted me after years of deep despair and suffering, and I can see how God placed him in my life to restore hope in my soul.
Sometimes after a long day of wandering and singing and climbing trees and playing, we would lie down in a cool green thicket under a lacy curtain of wisteria, and Rabbit would fold his arms around me prayerfully. I would rest my head in his warm hair and he would say, “I love you too much to ever use you.” He was one of the dearest men I have ever known, and I regret losing track of him when he moved away to the west coast.
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♥
WISDOM FROM A WANDERER
(From The Iris Diaries)
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”(Hebrews 13:2)
I walked in to have coffee at McDonald’s and saw a very unusual young man stroll in. He appeared to be homeless, but more youthful than other wanderers that I had seen. A stuffed pink heart hung from a string on his backpack. Small teddy bears clung to his shoelaces and a large seashell dangled from a cord around his waist. Hearts were painted on the outer edges on his black-rimmed glasses.
I overheard him asking someone for money for food, and heard another man speaking to him. I handed him a dollar. He waited in line to get breakfast, and then sat in a corner with his tray. I paid for my coffee and sat down on the other side of the dining area, but I wanted to approach the young man. I was apprehensive because he looked so different, but I finally walked over and said hello, and asked him how he was doing. He nervously handed me a small photo of himself, which I found rather odd, and I sat down to visit. He told me that his name was Luke.
His fingernails were painted black with pink hearts on the index fingers, so whenever he pointed at anything, I saw them. He began to show me a scrapbook that he was keeping with cutout photos and clippings and handwritten notes. I began to turn the pages and saw poems scribbled here and there and pieces of torn paper and small paintings. I felt as if I was reading into his soul. His artistic drive was apparent, and I was happy as he began to talk.
“There are so many negative things in the world,” he said. “I cut out articles from newspapers and magazines that represent evil things, and then I write or draw something that offers a possible solution.” He took a pair of scissors and a glue stick from his pocket and quickly cut out a picture from the paper, then dabbed some glue on it and stuck it in one of his sketchbooks.
“I am amazed how God always provides for me. I scarcely think of something I need before I receive it. The other night as I fell asleep in the park, I thought of how nice it would be to have a bicycle. When I woke up, there was a bike just laying there with no one around. People should trust God more than they do.”
As we talked a man came over and handed him a few dollars. After the man left, Luke turned to me and said, “Could you use some of this money?”
“No thank you,” I said.
Luke leaned his chin on his hand thoughtfully, and said, “If we receive things, we should also give, because we must keep the cycle of grace flowing. We should not cut off the grace by our selfishness.”
Then he began to tell me that people often seem offended by his presence and act as if they despise him for no reason. “I am kind to everyone and I’m no threat, but people act like they hate me for no reason, just for existing. People have trouble with anyone who is free and is not ensnared by the world.”
“That is because when we love others and are not attached to the worldly system, we will be despised like Jesus was,” I replied. “The Devil can’t stand to lose control of anyone.”
“You’re very advanced,” said the young man.
I mentioned to him that I had written my story and many stories about others in my manuscripts, but they are not published. He suddenly said, “But they will be. I assure you.”
“May I write about you too?” I inquired.
“Of course,” he answered.
He stroked his thick black hair for a moment and stated, “I have a word for you. You are a midwife and a healer. You have the ability to nurture children until they are ready to survive on their own.” I was quite surprised and said, “That’s odd. Someone told me before that I am a spiritual mother who can labor and birth children into the kingdom of God, and nurture them. You are my confirmation.”
“Wow, that’s heavy” he said.
“Luke, you have a great mind and a pure heart,” I said. “Is your mother like you?”
“My mother is very intelligent and is very easy to talk to. She is a midwife.” I perceived that I reminded him of his mother. I told him it was encouraging to see a young man speak well of his mother.
“I try in my own way to offset some of the evil and darkness around me,” he replied. “Most people my age talk about the terrible things happening in their families and in the world, but they don’t try to fix anything. These little hearts I wear are just symbols of the love I am trying to spread.
“A huge demonic invasion occurred in the seventies and this is why young people have it worse than ever before. Some people made deals with Satan before they were even born and have already lost their souls. Some people are fallen angels, and many of them are in our government.”
I answered, “We are on the verge of a spiritual awakening and you young people will lead us into it, because your minds are still pure and they have not been polluted by money and ambition. You still see God in terms of Spirit instead of in terms of an institution.”
We discussed how the sacred things of God have been ruined by capitalism and greed. “Jesus did not teach capitalism”, Luke said.
“You are right”, I answered. “I have to leave now, but this has been wonderful.” We grasped hands tightly before parting.
♥
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