Unveiling My Mother’s Face

I am sad to say that I still do not know my mother.  We talk on the phone and see each other once in a great while, but certain things have never been discussed.  Our conversations are polite and mostly meaningless.  I have never understood her, and I wish that I did.  My siblings and I have no recollection of ever being hugged or kissed or held on our mother’s lap.

After I had children of my own, I came to realize just how unimaginable that is.  I couldn’t go through a day without hugging my children numerous times and telling them how much I loved them.  I am an overprotective mother, because I never wanted my sons to know pain and isolation as I had known it.

I wrote to my father about how Mother always isolated herself from all of us emotionally, and he has begun writing some letters to try to help me understand her a bit more. He is really the only one who ever knew her well, aside from Granddaddy. In a recent email he wrote about the complexity of my mother:

I’m sure that your mother loved you all, but she was a complicated, very intelligent woman – and too young when she began to have children.  We were both bewildered by the experience, right in the middle of our college years. 

As my father unveils her, I see myself more clearly.  Everyone remarks how much I look like her, and I suspect there is more than just a physical resemblance between us.  For instance, neither of us can stand for a man to tell us what to do. Once as I was contemplating my wild days, the thought came to me that Mother must have kicked up her hooves a few times too, like a beautiful untamed mare.  She will always be a mysterious figure in our lives. I can only tell you the things that I remember.

 ~♥~

I remember my first cup of coffee with my mother. I think I was seven or eight. She said, “Since you are a young lady now, you may have some coffee with me.”  We sat together and sipped coffee from dainty bone china tea cups with saucers under them. We stirred in little cubes of sugar with tiny chiming silver spoons. I felt like a refined little lady. I have loved coffee ever since, and I have never forgotten that moment.

I do remember the little things that she did for us from time to time when we were children- boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts she delivered to us, daffodil dresses she sewed for us, quiet days when she showed us how to paint and draw and make pottery.  Once when we lived with her, she brought home three cats- for my brother, sister, and me.  She named them Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  I remember one snowy day when she sculpted snow-women, -cats and -rabbits in the front yard.

I recall that Mother taught me this little traditional song that I used to sing a lot as a young girl:

All night, all day,

Angels watching over me, my Lord. 

All night, all day,

Angels watching over me. 

Now I lay me down to sleep,

 Angels watching over me, my Lord,

Pray the Lord my soul to keep,

Angels watching over me. 

If I die before I wake,

Angels watching over me, my Lord,

Pray the Lord my soul to take,

Angels watching over me.

I suppose my mother knew that I would need plenty of angels, and I thank her for this little spiritual lullaby.  Many human angels have been dispatched to me over the years.

~♥~

There have been many small kindnesses. Mother has always been a giver of unusual and wonderful gifts. My jewelry box is filled with her presents for various occasions- a fossilized mammoth tusk pendant engraved with a dragonfly and a rose and the face of an angel, a bracelet with faceted green peridot and purple amethyst, a signed brooch with a cameo of Iris, Messenger of the Gods. I guess she’s trying to compensate for her lack of maternal affection or protectiveness, for the four-letter word she never spoke to us.

I don’t think that my mother intended to hurt us, because I know she has deep-rooted problems.  Her mother died of tuberculosis, when she was about six years old.  I have a copy of a poem she wrote in her twenties about what it was like as a child to stand by the coffin of her mother.  It was given to me by Granddaddy, and the title of it was “The Red Lined Coffin.”  I have seen pictures of my mother with her mother, and I know that they were very close.  There is such a serenity and joy in their faces together.  I have also seen the photos of my mother after her mother’s death, and there is a tragic change in her.  She looks lost and forlorn and miserable. I suspect that Mother passed on her sense of abandonment to us, that she could not mother us because she was deprived of mothering.

Granddaddy told me that she was very involved in church when she was young, and that she was a zealous member of the Rainbow Club, a well-known Christian youth organization in those days. He said that she was extremely spiritual-minded.  That really interested me, because I am the only one of the grandchildren who turned out that way.

But Granddaddy said that something happened to her after the tragedy of his wife’s death, that my mother had seemed hopelessly embittered since then.  Granddaddy tells me that the manner of his wife’s death was terrible and prolonged, and that she literally coughed herself to death.  He said the medications could not control the coughing in her final stages, and that he would never forget the sound of her torment all through the night.  He was a teacher at the time, and he said that he could still remember the sound of his young students’ footsteps tiptoeing up the steps in the middle of the night, to leave his family bags of groceries and other things.

Granddaddy remarried and his new wife Endora was terribly cruel to his children. The wicked stepmother profile in fairy tales must have some basis in reality.  Endora made my mother watch while she drowned a litter of kittens. I have heard other horror stories about this woman.  I am told that Granddaddy was overseas with the Navy for awhile during this time. He was not aware of what was happening until great psychological damage had been done to the children, and he divorced her. To the present day, my mother’s house is always overrun with cats, and she adopts every pitiful critter that she meets.

I am very hesitant to complain about my mother, because I really do believe that she tried in her own way. I believe she needed help, and that she was incapable of normal motherly affection.  Perhaps if my father had stayed and supported her, she could have worked through some of her problems.  Or perhaps not.  But we will never know that. My father wrote to me about the minister who gave them marriage counseling:

“She got me to attend the Sunday afternoon coffee hours at the Presbyterian church, organized by Dr. Martin, the minister of that church.  He gave us some counseling early in our marriage.  And the meetings were a source of inspiration to us- at least to me.  Sometimes there was a string quartet, once there was a lovely reading from Finnegan’s Wake.  Often there were discussions between rich Cuban students in favor of Baptista, and poor Cuban students in favor of Castro.  (Unfortunately, Dr. Martin killed himself one morning before breakfast, a heavy blow to your mother, who was really taken with him and his wife.)”

That must have seemed like a hex upon their marriage, a sign that the tragedy would never end for them.

Ministers have always been drawn to my mother, and I can recall two men of the cloth who wanted to marry her. The first one was named Charlie Huber, and he visited a lot when I was a young child (five, perhaps).  He would sit on the floor with me and play animal games.  I would climb on his warm back with my tiny hands clutching his collar and he would crawl around the room, pretending to be a cow then a horse, then a pig or whatever I wanted him to be.  I would squeeze his nose and he would make animal noises of different kinds to make me laugh.  He had thick curly black hair, and once he sat on the floor and let me roll his hair with pink curlers. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.  I loved him and longed for him to be my new father, but things didn’t work out.

When I returned from Thompson Orphanage to my mother’s house at the age of twelve, a minister named Jim would visit pretty often.  He took the five of us- Mother, Margaret, my two half-sisters, and me- to Silver Springs to see the glass bottom boats. It was the first and last time that I ever saw swimming pigs, snorting and kicking their stubby legs in the clear water. What a sight! Jim disappeared soon after that. Maybe those pigs were just too much for him.

There is a Lutheran minister in Saint Augustine who still inquires about my mother when he sees me. I have always found this odd, and wonder why preachers are so intrigued by her. Are they looking for a little stroll into the jungle of sin, or do they perceive something in her that she tries to conceal?

I watched The History Channel one day, and scientists discussed possible explanations for the plagues of Egypt during the time of Moses. They said the fire which rained from the sky was the result of a volcanic eruption mixed with hail. Molten lava was encrusted with ice, creating amazing grenades.  Volcanic hail!

My mother is like a snow-woman with a heart of fire. Sometimes I can see it blazing in her eyes. She is consumed by guilt on the inside, because she will not speak of what she did to us or why. She must know what it would mean to us to hear her version of the story, and I think she would feel better too, but she will only remark, “The past is the past. I don’t want to talk about it.”

~♥~

I have photographs of my mother from the years that we lived in the orphanage, and they make me think of Dylan’s song “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”- especially the part about her “saintlike face and ghostlike soul” and how her “fingertips fold.” She always wore flowing tie-dyed dresses and crocheted sandals and long golden hair that was usually braided. Sometimes she would coil the braids on top of her head like a crown.

Now Mother’s hair is pure white.  The last time I picked her up at the airport, she wore a striped top, a vest covered with rainbow cats, black knickers, and striped knee socks with embroidered baby doll shoes. Her long white hair hung down on her shoulders. If she had been toting a big lollipop, she could have been a perfect munchkin.

There are so many interesting stories I could tell about her, like how she knocked a wild man over the head with a lasagna pan so hard he almost fell down, or the time that she punched a yelling woman so hard that she landed on her bottom and slid a few feet on the pavement with her feet up in the air. So much for non-violent Quakers.

It is an experience to go shopping with Mother because she delivers a loud ongoing commentary while she shops. My son loves to watch people’s faces when my mother does this.

We went into a boutique one day, and Mother said she had drawn the name of a nasty co-worker for Christmas; she proclaimed that she was looking for something that the lady would hate.  She picked up a ghastly gold egg-shaped bag with a one-loop handle and brocade edges.  She opened it up into two satin-lined halves and looked inside and said, “That is so ugly!  I’m going to get that for her, just for spite.” She snapped it shut, and I looked around and noticed the eyes of the sales lady glaring at us. Her glittery reading glasses were resting on the tip of her wrinkly nose. But my mother never cares. She does what she pleases and I can only smile.

She bought the bag and called me after the office Christmas party.  She said, “Would you believe that woman loved that ugly bag, and she just raved about it, and she’s been nice to me ever since I gave it to her?  What a fluke!”

But my favorite story of all is the underwear story. My mother is a very large woman who is obsessive about beautiful underwear. She doesn’t wear the white cotton version that you expect grannies to wear. She wears the kind that you would expect to find in a children’s boutique or the Victoria Secret specialty line for old ladies. In her underwear drawer you will find amazing lingerie in gargantuan sizes:  purple satin with black polka-dots, pink with white ruffles on the fanny, red satin with white hearts, baby blue with tiny pink roses, sexy black lace with red edges.

She travels a lot by airplane and whenever her luggage floats down the belt, it is impossible to miss. Among all of the professional blues and tans and greys, one hippie bag with bright colors and flowers will declare its independence, and you instantly know it is hers. Since security has been tightened at the airports, her bag is always the first one to go under the microscope. I think people are just curious about what might be inside the bag that dares to be different.

So one day, Mother was preparing for a flight and she decided to get revenge.  She called me and said, “I’m so sick of always having my bag searched for no reason. This time, I’m putting all of my underwear on top of everything else in my bag, just for spite.”

A few days later, she called me again. She said, “You should have seen the embarrassment on this man’s face when he was digging through my big underwear, and the people all around him were giggling under their breath. I enjoyed every minute of it.”  I imagined that scene and laughed and laughed about it. She can be terribly funny.

But deep inside of her, I perceive a troubled child.

When she comes from California to visit me, she always wants to sleep on the big cozy couch in the living room.  I have heard her wake up with nightmares, and I’ve heard her talk to herself.  But the most chilling thing that I have heard is when a child’s voice comes out of her mouth in the middle of the night, praying out loud to Jesus.  It is the sound of a little girl with a mousey voice saying, “Dear Jesus, bless us all and take care of us, and help us all to have a really good time…”

 ~♥~

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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!

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Addendum to “My Own Guardian Angel”

When Evelyn died, I sent a copy of “My Own Guardian Angel” to her daughter Susan to let her know how much Evelyn had meant to me.  Susan was so affected by it that she shared it with the family, and it was later read aloud at Evelyn’s memorial service.

Susan sent me a letter and program afterward to express her appreciation for the piece and told me that when it was read, “there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.”  She asked me to keep in touch and to visit if I was ever in the area in Maryland.

I was honored to be able to be part of such a great lady’s memorial service.  Here is the cover and back of the program that Susan sent to me, which really affected me:

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The Dancing Fool

(From Part II of Memoirs)

“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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The Green Queen

This seems to be an appropriate story for Saint Patrick‘s Day…

~♥~

(From Part II of Memoirs)

Evelyn introduced me to Katy after she ran away from home in upstate New York, and someone brought her to Evelyn’s house.  I was living in an abandoned house called “the Hovel” at the time, and Evelyn drove her there to meet me.  I was thirteen and Katy was eighteen.  She was a beautiful girl with a Madonna-like face and a soft gentle voice, long brown hair and dark brown eyes. She was very quiet, but we struck up a friendship on the spot, and the two of us were inseparable. I had never had a deep friendship before Katy, because I was moved around too much as a child.

Katy and I connected on both a conscious and mystical level, because we both felt like tragic characters thrown into a world that didn’t love us or even own us. Because we were both emotionally damaged, we were delusional in many ways, imagining ourselves to be Medieval characters on a different stage.  We pretended we were somewhere else in time and space.  We dressed out of fashion and took drugs and escaped our reality in any way that we could, in order to cope with the disaster of our lives. People who became close to us became part of our cast of characters, and sometimes we renamed them accordingly.

Katy and I bummed money together when we were hungry, ate together, ripped off food from stores together, hitchhiked across the country together, took drugs together, and stayed in the same hollow places. We could talk about anything and everything, and we both were spiritual minded.  We slept under bridges, in old vans and cars, in caves, in bushes, in abandoned houses.  Sometimes we slept on the floor of the apartment of our friend Isabel who lived in the “student ghetto,” a terrible neighborhood with dwellings so badly maintained that they should have been condemned.  Many rough people lived there, as well as some poor students, because it was a cheap place to live, and it was only a couple of blocks from the University of Florida campus.

After our initial meeting, several months passed, and I asked Katy, “Do you realize that we have been together for five or six months, and that we never do anything separately? That is truly amazing.” Even when we had sweethearts, they could not keep us apart for more than a short time.  It was almost scary.

Katy was the most amazing shoplifter I have ever seen.  Once we went to a produce mart to see if they were throwing out any bruised fruits or vegetables that they might share with us.  The owner was very hateful and said that he poured pesticide on all of the produce before disposing of it.  We were stunned by his coldness and insensitivity to us, and we left in a rage.  After we had gotten down the street and around the corner, I realized that Katy was carrying a watermelon! I asked her about how she managed to steal it, and she just laughed.  A few days later, we went into a grocery store, and she was wearing a light cotton floral dress with no shoes on and no handbag.  I think that we bought a small item and left.  After walking a couple blocks, we stopped to rest on the steps of a church, and Katy took a gallon of milk from under her dress!  I was shocked again, and this time she told me that she had placed it tightly between her thighs and walked out slowly.  She laughed about how the employees were looking at her so curiously, because they knew she had taken something, but they couldn’t figure out how. She told me this was how she had stolen the watermelon.  It may sound unbelievable, but it is true.

For quite some time while we were friends, I began to wear only purple, and Katy wore only green.  Thus we were nicknamed “the purple princess” and “the green queen.”  We were infamous for being eccentric and wild and mystical. Crazy rumors circulated about us in town that we were witches and things like that. One fellow used to put garlic around his neck whenever he came to see us, and he always said that I had “the evil eye.” One of our favorite rumors about town was that we flew in from Massachusetts every night for a cup of tea at the New Harvest restaurant.  A waitress there asked us one night if this was true. I laughed and said, “That story is almost too good to deny, but unfortunately it is not true.”

One man who fell in love with Katy came to Isabel’s house one day, with downcast sad eyes and long curly brown locks of hair, and asked to see Katy. She was out at that moment, so he pleaded with me to tell her that he loved her and wanted her to go and stay with him at his house in the country.  He scribbled a note with his phone number on it and gave it to me to give her.  He looked pitiful with his head lowered as he walked away.

When I gave her the note upon her return, I asked her, “What are you going to do?  Do you love Richard?”  Her lips formed a soft and sly smile, and she said nothing.  I knew then that she would not go with him, and it saddened me. I also felt bad that he tried to go through me to get to Katy.

There was a drug dealer who lived next door to Isabel.  He was a very friendly and outgoing guy, with a big wide grin, and very colorful and hip clothing.  He was always hosting parties. Katy and I had access to free drugs from him, because he liked having someone to try out his dope, before he bought any large quantities. He would give us some LSD or mescaline and check with us an hour or so later to see if it was “good.”  We had this arrangement with him for quite some time.

One night Katy and I were in his place, and a lot of stoned people were there, and the music was playing loudly, and the room was full of smoke. Our friendly neighborhood dealer had on a green velvet cap and green bell-bottom pants, and his eyes were very glassy.  He told everyone that he had a lot of leftover drugs from different shipments, and that they were up for grabs, although he had no idea what any of it was.  He poured some pills of different colors and sizes from a bottle into his hand and threw them gently onto the floor. Everyone was laughing and joking, and I picked up a few of them and popped them into my mouth.  I was always doing daring things.

A little while later, Katy and I went back to Isabel’s place next door.  I became very sleepy and decided to take nap on a mat on the floor. I thought I had been resting for about an hour when I woke up, and several of my friends were looking down at me with concern.  A friend named Rabbit asked me if I was okay, and I said, “Yes, why?”  He said, “Do you know how long you’ve been sleeping?”   I saw that it was still dark, and I said, “I’ve just been taking a nap.  What’s the big deal?”  Rabbit explained that I had been sleeping for about eighteen hours.  I sat up quickly, and was terrified.  I remembered the pills I had taken before I laid down.  I asked for someone to bring me some water or coffee or something.  I stood up to go out and get some fresh air.  I opened the front door, and stepped out onto the porch, and suddenly I couldn’t see properly.  There were splotchy light flashes in front of my eyes.  I began to cry, and told my friends that my eyes were messed up. Someone gave me some water, and told me to calm down.  After a short while, my eyes got back to normal.  But I was still shaking and scared.

That night changed my whole attitude about taking drugs.  I had known of people who died on speed, or whose minds were permanently messed up from LSD and had to live in psychiatric wards, but somehow I never thought anything could happen to me.

One thing has always confused me about our generation. We were fanatical about eating pure and natural foods.  We would only get our groceries at Mother Earth Natural Foods and The Hogtown Granary Natural Food Co-op.  We read every store label to make sure there were no harmful chemicals in anything we ate.  Then we took LSD and other substances.  It’s crazy.  As I said, nothing made sense in those days.

But I did make a few true friends that were worried about me, and thought that something terrible would happen to me if I didn’t change.  One friend of mine tells me that during this time, I couldn’t talk coherently, and that the words I spoke didn’t make any sense.  She said that sometimes I would say half of a sentence, then pause, and say half of another thought that had nothing to do with the first part.  She was very scared about me, and told me that after I stopped taking hallucinogenic drugs, the difference in me was startling, that she could tell the fog in my mind was lifting, and that I was going to be all right.

I also think often about my long “nap” and how my eyes were going blind, and how I could have been in a coma or something without knowing it.  But God allowed me to wake up that day, and He gave me another chance.  I thank God for this, and for putting a few good friends around me who loved me even when I was such a mess.

I never knock on wood or read my astrology page, and I don’t thank my lucky stars or the luck o’ the Irish.  To me these things are superstition and idolatry.

I go directly to the source to make inquiries, and give thanks for the unmerited favor He has shown toward me.  To do otherwise would be to make mockery of Him.

If you knew that someone had saved your life, you would want to go to them personally and thank them.  What if someone had saved your life repeatedly?  I know divine providence when I see it, so I must give thanks.

OLIVE TWIST ©2012

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Gandalf: A Sketch of a Lunatic

I can see now that all of the characters God placed in my path were part of His conspiracy to reach out to me in different voices.  He remembered my youth and how I received Christ when I was nine years old. Jesus was always the central theme of my life, and even these rather spooky people had His Holy Name on their tongues.

***********

(From Part II of Memoirs)

Gandalf appeared one day in a parking lot across from Isabel’s house in Gainesville.  He hobbled out of a green van with white letters painted on the side that read:  “Ship Chaos and the Chaos Crew.”  Behind him appeared his fellow magicians:  Angel, Pickles, and Samantha.

Gandalf’s ice blue eyes were almost hidden behind silver-grey curly hair, eyebrows, and a full beard.  A rainbow colored velvet hat perched on his head, and his hand clutched a twisted cane from the Foxwood Forest on Nantucket.  Strange pendants, rings, small velvet bags, and other trinkets hung around his neck, over the blue velvet vest and purple satin balloon-sleeved blouse.  Blue velvet knickers were fastened with a gold button at the knee.  Jester-diamonded knee socks and brown sandals covered the bony calves and feet.

His appearance fascinated me so I stepped off the porch and walked across the lot to talk with him. He asked if he could park his van there for a time and I told him Isabel wouldn’t mind, so he ended up there with his crew for a couple of weeks.

Samantha and Gandalf made an esoteric pair.  She had black frizzy wicked-witch hair and knew all about astrology, pentagrams, spells, and “the correlations between spherical musical octaves and moods and events in time and space.” Their eerie conversations silenced everyone around them, and no one knew what they were talking about.

Gandalf and I wandered aimlessly together, and our conversations were as nonsensical as limericks, or Gollum’s riddles in The Hobbit. One day, we sat together on a brick wall surrounding an herb garden on the university campus. A policeman strutted up to us in a blue bright-buttoned uniform with a star on his chest.  “Are you students?” he asked.  He already knew we weren’t.

“No, we aren’t,” said Gandalf.

“May I see your i.d.?” the officer asked.

Gandalf took two cards from the chest pocket of his satin shirt, and handed one of them to the cop.  The first was a card with said merely “Gandalf” in the middle in gothic lettering with the word “thaumaturgy” (which means magic) in one corner, and medieval symbols in another corner.  The policeman laughed and asked for another card.  Then Gandalf gave him his identification from the insane-asylum in Salem, Massachusetts.  The cop looked at Gandalf curiously, and pointing at me, he asked, “And who is this with you?”

Gandalf leaned forward, thoughtfully clutching his stick.  “This is the Magical Princess of Love from the Moons and Junes and Ferris Wheels caper,” he replied, grinning and holding up his wand.  I guess the policeman concluded that we were harmless, because he walked away speechless, removing his cap to scratch his head.  The two of us laughed and laughed about that.

Gandalf told me that once he had been in a courtroom for a hearing about a planned parking lot that would pave over several vegetable gardens planted by families.  Gandalf was put on the stand, and he stood up and cried, “How can you pass a law against a plant?”

“Ten days in jail!” the judge had ordered.

“Well, explain it to me.” Gandalf had shouted.

“Twenty days!” the judge had bellowed.  After Gandalf’s sentence had been raised to a month, he had rolled his eyes in their sockets and yelled, “And I am Richard the Lionheart.”  Silence followed.  Then the judge reversed his sentence, and recommended Gandalf for a shorter term in the “nut house.”

Gandalf told me several times that he was searching for Jesus because he believed He was still on Earth.  “I want to smoke Him out of the closet,” he said, “so I can be His staging director.”

Just before Gandalf’s departure from Gainesville, we meandered on a chilly night through dark alley ways and parks.  Tonight I would become the official Magical Princess of Love, he told me.  We sat down on the dewy grass, under a moss-bearded tree by a small wooden bridge called “Shepherd’s Bridge.”  We looked down at the small creek flowing under us, and the moon glimmered on Gandalf’s black velvet cloak and silver hair.

Gandalf shook up my world up and dissolved it in his hands.  I looked for a moment into the face of the real Gandalf the Wizard, crouched in the darkness with the wind blowing.  His bells and pendants jingled softly, as he removed a small shiny object from his neck.

A small sterling silver ring with seven tiny inlaid hearts of different colors shimmered between his thumb and forefinger.  Solemnly he explained to me that this ring came from a girl named “Flower Child” who lived on the Island of Nantucket and ate nothing but flowers.  This ring was magic, and each heart on it represented the heart of one special person, each chosen by the wearer of the ring.  He said that the white heart should be reserved for Jesus.  Then he asked me if I would save the icy blue cracked heart only for him. I consented to his request.

He told me that I must turn the ring on my finger three times every morning and every night.  If I did as he told me, he said all my dreams would come true.  Then he took my smallest finger, and put the ring on it as though it was a sacred rite.  “Now you are one of the Chaos Crew. If you get any clues on where to find Jesus, let me know.”

I kissed my favorite magician on the bearded cheek, and thanked him for the honor.  That same night, he hobbled back into his “ship” with all of his phantoms, and disappeared into the cold night.

Winter still makes me think of him.  He is the wind when it cries against the window or the north country on a cold foggy day; he is an Anderson fairy tale read in candlelight by a frosted window; he is the first two lines of Sylvia Plath’s poem, Mad Girl’s Love Song:  “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I think I made you up inside my head…”

OLIVE TWIST ©2012

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Little Horse

Yesterday was my sister’s birthday and today is mine, so I wanted to write a special post dedicated to my sister!

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, 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 is from Wikipedia)

OLIVE TWIST ©2012

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Dreaming of Granddaddy

(Memoirs)

“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.

OLIVE TWIST ©2012

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The Pumpkin Lady

(Memoirs)

One cool and misty morning, as I wandered through “the student ghetto,” a voice called out and asked me if I would like a cup of hot carob to drink.  I looked on one of the rotting wooden porches, and saw a woman with bright coppery red hair, breastfeeding a very young blonde baby.

She and the child looked like two ragged dolls, and her feet were bare and dirty like mine.  She sat on an old rocking chair, and the porch creaked as she rocked.  I walked through the fog up to the doorstep, and said, “Are you talking to me?”  She answered, “Yes, would you like some hot carob?”  I was more than happy to accept.

She invited me into her little apartment. She carried her child into the house and laid him on the bed.  She told me her son was mentally handicapped, and that she had moved just before his birth. The father of her baby had tried to kill her while while she was pregnant in New York City, so she had fled to Florida.  She said that her name was Isabel.

Isabel was similar to my other friend Evelyn, in that she loved to help others.  She shared everything that she had with people from the streets.  If someone was in her apartment and she noticed them admiring a garment or object, she would say, “Would you like to have that?  Go ahead and take it.”  She was the least materialistic person I have ever met.

After knowing her for many years, I can honestly say I have never met a woman with such sacrificial love towards her child.  It is the purest and most unselfish love I have ever seen.  She has never put anyone or anything above her son and his welfare, and has freely given up her own pleasures and dreams to take care of him.  Because of his handicap, she still has to constantly encourage and care for him, but she never complains or considers him a burden.

Because she was born on Halloween, and had bright red hair, I nicknamed her “the pumpkin lady.”  Here is sketch I wrote about her years ago:

A cockroach squirms as Isabel reaches for an orange from the wooden bowl.  She hands the fruit to me, then sits down and unbuttons the front of her yellow calico dress.  She uncovers a large pale breast and lifts her blonde baby from the bed on the floor.  She settles back into the rocking chair, and her son sucks and snorts loudly, occasionally gasping for air.

Isabel’s earthy feet rock the chair gently, and she reaches for the nearest nail on the wall, where she hangs her black velvet cloak.  She drapes it across her freckled bare shoulders.  Her pumpkin-colored hair with the texture of corn silk gleams brightly against the blackness of the velvet.  Her ferocious almond-shaped brown eyes are the color of fertile soil in a garden.

The pumpkin lady plants vegetables in her back yard in the ghetto.  With them, she makes soup for the “Doom Soup Kitchen” which she opened in her back yard for the street people.  Nobody makes soup like Isabel.

Her two dogs stretch and whimper from the back room.  Her rooster was shot by a sleepy neighbor while cockle-doodle-dooing the day before.

In the kitchen, Isabel has big glass jars in rows, filled with beans, rice, spinach noodles, and flour.  Whenever she opens the windows for fresh air, giant cockroaches fall out on the windowsill, and some fly around.  I always shriek when this happens.

One street person, named Jo-Jo because of his constant stuttering, knocks on the door.  He has been wounded in Vietnam, and stumbles a lot.  “Belle-Belle-Belle”, the voice came softly, “I need a place to sleep-sleep-sleep.”  She opens her graffiti-covered door and tosses a blanket on the floor, and Jo-Jo lays upon it in darkness.

Stirring a pot on the old iron stove, she offers him a bowl of rice and beans.  His shaky hand reaches through the kitchen doorway to accept it, and later, an empty bowl is passed in.  He lies down again on the itchy blanket, to dream his nightmares of being alive.

Isabel never turns away anyone from her door- she freely offers food, bathrooms, sleeping bags or blankets.  She is known as the “Pumpkin Lady” to the ghetto-dwellers.  She is Mother Earth, or a Madonna to cherubs who have fallen from grace and remain lost and forlorn forever.

OLIVE TWIST ©2012

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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

(See “Memoirs” at the top of the screen for more stories like this.)

OLIVE TWIST ©2012

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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.

 

OLIVE TWIST ©2012

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“Brother Love”

A Cloud Of Witnesses: Portraits of Faith

“He spoke as one having authority, and not as the scribes and the Pharisees.”

Deacon Proctor has been like a spiritual brother to me for many years, and we have enjoyed deep mystical communion.  He is tall and broad with a flat top haircut and a severely twisted hand.  His black hair has an ever-widening section of white on one side, and he has suits in an array of various colors.

Once I remember him teaching about the verse in Isaiah which says “Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.”  He looked at the arms of his suit and shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s funny, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to wear this suit today, because it has a bleach stain on the side, but it illustrates this passage. “  The suit was appropriately wine-colored, with the white spot near the pocket.

The deacon’s movements are marionette-like, the tilting of his head, the raising and lowering of his arms and shoulders.  Affectionately known by Elder Foster as “Brother Love”, he is a tremendously gifted teacher and man of faith.  He was the Sunday school teacher before I was appointed to the task, and I was quite terrified about teaching after him.

I have never heard anyone teach as Deacon Proctor does. He is like a great waiter at a restaurant.  A bad waiter can ruin even the best food.  A professional waiter can make any meal even better, by presenting it with grace and style and timing. This is how Deacon Proctor serves the Word of God.  He presents it with love, simplicity and clarity so that even a child could understand it.  It is evident that he is a man who loves to study in order to gain more wisdom.

I asked Deacon Proctor one day about his deformed right hand.  He smiled and shrugged his shoulders and said, “It was from an accident a couple of years ago.  I was working on someone’s car motor with a rag in my hand.  I got distracted while I was talking and the rag was pulled into the fan belt along with my hand. It tore my hand up but I never felt any pain. In the hospital, the doctor kept saying ‘Why don’t you quit being so macho, and let me give you some morphine?’ and I kept telling him it really didn’t hurt.  I know that God kept it from hurting.

“Two weeks before the accident happened, I had a vivid dream about a cat clawing up my hand, and I asked Mother Foster what she thought it meant.  She avoided me for a week or so after that, like she thought I was weird,” he said chuckling. “After this happened, we all understood it.  The Spirit was warning me in advance.”

Another deacon from the church told me that it was incredible to him how Deacon Proctor never complained about his hand being mutilated, or about having to live with the inconvenience of it from then on. He behaved almost as though nothing had happened.

Deacon Proctor was also in a terrible wreck while driving a huge concrete truck, and he struck the driver side of a small vehicle.  He says he jumped out and checked the man’s breathing and pulse, and he was sure the man was dead.  He said, “I began to weep and kept pointing at the man and crying, ‘You can’t die, no, you can’t die.’  The ambulance came and the medics couldn’t revive him, so helicopter came and took him.  I found out later that the man lived and he is doing fine,” he said shaking his head.  “I really believe the Holy Ghost raised the man, because I kept pointing at him and saying he couldn’t die.  He explained how Jesus told His disciples that they would do greater miracles than He did, and the scriptures say God quickens the dead and calls those things which are not as if they are.”

The deacon frequently has dreams and visions and hears the voice of the Spirit.  On one occasion when I was feeling great anxiety, I had heard an inward voice say “Trust in Me.”  I went to church the following Sunday and Deacon Proctor said to me, “The Lord told me this week that I just need to trust Him.”  This surprised me, because I had not told him about the voice that told me the same thing.

Here is one of the most interesting dreams that the deacon told me about:

I dreamed that I was at a crowded fair surrounded by games and noise and music and bright lights. A man walked up to me and said, “Follow me” and then began to walk away.  I decided to do what he said so I walked right behind him.  The man kept talking to me over his shoulder, and I kept trying to get a look at his face and to hear him better.  With all of the noise and confusion of people around me, I could hear his voice, but couldn’t understand his words.  I never got a look at the man’s face, but I kept following anyway.  The man kept walking in all different directions, and I stayed right behind him the whole time.  The moon was really large up in the sky, and it had a face on it, which seemed to be watching me.

The next day, Deacon Proctor mentioned the dream to a co-worker at his job, because he wondered what it meant.  The co-worker said quickly, “It looks to me like God just wanted you to follow him, and he wanted to see if you would or not.”  The deacon almost cried when he heard it, because he knew that it was true. I added that I thought the face on the moon was the face of God watching from above the whole time while Deacon Proctor was following Him on the ground. Even with all of the distractions and amusements that could have lured him away, he did not turn aside.  I thought the fair represented the worldly temptations that can keep us from following God.

The deacon says he was talking with Elder Foster one day when the Spirit told him to go to his son’s house and pray.  He and Elder and Mother Foster walked to the house and no one was home. So they returned to the church where coincidentally, the deacon’s son pulled up a few minutes later with his girlfriend in the car. The deacon told him about his sense of urgency to pray for him. His son was not a believer, but he accepted the prayers of the three of them.

About a week later, a sense of heaviness came over the deacon during street services, and people noticed that he was acting strangely and pacing about.  Right after services were dismissed, Deacon Proctor learned that his son had been stabbed in the neck by the girlfriend that had been in the car when they prayed for him, and he had been rushed to the hospital. The deacon hurried there to see his son and the bleeding was so bad, that the family did not think he would make it.  But miraculously he did survive, and Deacon Proctor says that it was because of the prayer of intercession that had been offered a few days before, prompted by the leading of the Spirit. He said he shudders to think of how it would have ended up if he had not obeyed the Spirit and prayed.

Deacon Proctor has encountered many trials at work and the Lord has been faithful to protect him.  He told us one day at church about a series of events that happened to him.

One of his knees was hurting very badly one day at work and he mentioned it to one of his co-workers.  The man began to mock him and said that he was just faking it to get out of working.  Deacon Proctor ignored the man, and didn’t say anything.  The next day that man came in with his knee in so much pain, that he could barely walk on it for several days.

Then one day his elbow was hurting and he complained about it to someone, and they began making jokes about it.  That person developed a pain in their elbow that became so unbearable that they ended up having surgery on it.

Then a supervisor was bragging to people about how he was going to get the deacon fired and give his job to someone else.  The next day that man was fired, and Deacon Proctor was promoted into his job.  When reports got around about these events at work, the other employees became afraid because they realized that the deacon was under divine protection.

Deacon Proctor and I talk from time to time about the need for a true revival of the church, and he told me about one that occurred years ago in Saint Augustine.  Tent services were held outside, and an evangelist named Walter Camps came to lead them.  The revival went on for a month, and the Spirit moved so intensely that all of the bars in the surrounding area had to close, because they had no customers.

The deacon said he used to mock people who fell down when touched by preachers on television and other services he had attended because he thought it was a pretense.  But at this revival he went to the altar for prayer, and Reverend Camps asked him what he wanted prayer for.  Deacon Proctor told him that he wanted prayer for his mind.  The evangelist gave him a peculiar look then he put his hand on the deacon’s forehead, and Deacon Proctor fell down unconscious.  He testifies that ever since that day, he has never been the same and he has no more of the problems that he had at the time.  He also doesn’t doubt God’s power.

I feel immensely honored to know a great man of faith such as Deacon Proctor who is so wise, and yet so humble before God and man.

OLIVE TWIST ©2012

 

(Photo from http://simplyorthodox.tumblr.com/)

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The Street Child: A Self-Portrait

OLIVE TWIST ©2012

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.

(Endnote:  Poem by Countee Cullen)

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Elder & Mother Foster

A Cloud of Witnesses:  Portraits of Faith

Elder Foster is graceful with hands that swim like fish around him as he speaks. He bows from his slender waist and lowers his head slightly, greenish brown eyes looking up to others with humility.  His caramel-colored suit is well-tailored, his shoes polished, his white shirt crisp.

Mother Foster has amazing hats and weathered hands and I have seldom seen her silver hair.  She braids it tightly against her scalp and tucks it under her hats.  Her waist is nicely trim for an elderly woman, the collar of her dress edged with white lace, her black ballerina slippers small and cozy.  Her smile is broad and warm and her eyes always seem to look upward and inward to invisible things.

Elder and Mother Foster are my spiritual parents, and I am just one of their clumsy and confused children.

Elder Foster has ministered to his church for almost forty years, and he is still the most energetic pastor I have ever seen.  He seems much younger when he preaches because he jumps and shouts and runs down from the pulpit into the congregation.  His agility is amazing at these times.

He can be so fiery during his sermons, yet he is so gentle and humble afterwards, when he shakes my hand and says, “Are you behaving yourself, Sister Olive?” or “Be encouraged, Sister Olive.” I guess this is why one preacher who visited our church refers to him as a “Gentle Giant”.

Many times Elder Foster speaks directly to me about things in my life that he has no way of knowing, and he encourages or corrects me with great gentleness. I recognize in those moments that the Spirit is speaking to me and that I have to be obedient, if I want to grow spiritually.

Elder Foster once remarked, “You know the trouble with many of us is that we trust the mailman more than we trust God. When we address a letter and put a stamp on it and place it in the mailbox, we have confidence that the mail will arrive where it’s supposed to go.  We don’t call the mailman or the postmaster to keep track of the letter, or call to make sure it arrives at its destination.

“But when we address a prayer to God, we don’t have confidence that it will get to God, or that it will accomplish the thing that we are asking.  Our lack of faith is why many of our prayers are unanswered.”

Elder Foster puts more money into the offering plate than he receives from the district for his services.  He is always speaking about people who exemplify the life of faith.  He tells of a poor preacher who had no money, but went to the grocery store and got a cart and put the food he needed in it, and he prayed and trusted God to take care of him. The preacher walked up to the cashier lane, and a man stepped up with his wallet open and said, “Pastor, let me take care of that for you.”

Our elder also speaks of a minister who heard that someone in his church had died.  The minister went to that house and the man’s wife had covered him with a sheet as she awaited the mortician.  The minister said “The Spirit didn’t say anything to me about this brother dying.”  Then he pulled back the sheet and the man got up.

One Sunday a strange man came into our church to leave an offering envelope for a family member.  As he came down the aisle, I noticed the intensity of his face and eyes as he looked around nervously.  He hurriedly handed the envelope to Sister Shirley near the altar and left.

Elder Foster was preaching later in the service, and told us that he had had a dream the night before, about being down by the fish creek and meeting a man who was demon-possessed and that he had cast the demon out of the man.  When he awoke he thought that he must have eaten something the night before that caused him indigestion and strange dreams.  But then the man from his dream walked into church and left the offering.

The elder often speaks about the importance of preaching the gospel “in season and out of season”, because you never know when that Death Angel will come around and take someone.  He says that one night a phone call came for Mother Foster from a woman that she worked with at the paper mill.  Elder Foster did not want to disturb his wife while she was sleeping, so he told the woman to call his wife another time.  Mother Foster went to work the next morning and the woman had died.

Elder Foster also recounted this story with great sorrow:  “A man came up to me one Wednesday night after the service was over, asking how to get saved.  I was in a hurry that night, and asked him to come and see me on Sunday.  When he didn’t come on Sunday, I inquired about him and found out that he had died.  I have learned never to make anyone wait again, because the Devil will try to cut them off beforehand.”

Mother Foster is an amazing spiritual leader as well.  She diligently taught all of her children about prayer and faith while they were young.  Several of the Fosters’ sons are preachers now.  Mother Foster says that one of her boys, Aaron, used to preach through the open window from his high chair when he was a baby, and would tell people about Christ.  She says she used to have terrible migraines until one of them put his tiny hands on her and prayed, when he was only a little baby boy.

She says they have never had a lot of money but they acknowledge that God always provided for their needs.  Mother Foster once testified about a woman with five children that lived down the street from her years ago. Sometimes the woman would come to her door and tell her she didn’t have any food for her children.  Mother Foster said that she always bought just enough food for her family for seven days at a time, but she would open her refrigerator, and give the woman some meat and vegetables and bread for her children.  As Mother Foster gave the bag of food to the woman, she would say to her, “Now, come back around here this evening, because I want you to see what the Lord is going to do for me, because I gave you what you needed.”  She said that without fail, someone would show up before dinnertime, and knock on the door and say, “I just caught some fish, and I have more than I need.  Would you like some?” or someone would bring her greens and vegetables from their garden.  She says that God always provided whenever she was obedient.

Mother Foster told me an amazing story about a woman who asked her to come to her house:  “I went to visit this poor woman and she told me that her husband had been abusive to her for many years, and I told her ‘God would never want anyone to place themselves in danger. So we are going to take this problem to God, and pray that your husband will leave and never come back.  First I need you to go to the closet and get a pair of his shoes, and bring them here.’ The woman went and got his shoes, and I told her to put them right in front of the door, with the toes pointed as if they were about to walk out.  She did this and then we started to pray out loud.  We prayed and prayed with all our hearts, until I had a clear feeling, and I told her that it was done.  I told her she had to believe that God was going to do answer our prayers.  I said, ‘It might not be today or tomorrow or even this week, but you have to trust God.’  Well, it turned out that her husband came home that very night, and took all of his belongings and left, and he never returned home again.”

Mother Foster taught me to pray earnestly on my knees until I sense that the work is finished, and then to believe God.  My prayers were never answered until I learned to pray in the proper way.  Mother Foster taught me that God loves to act of our behalf, when He knows that He will be glorified in it.

I have learned so much from the Foster’s about living by faith, and “pressing on” until death, and I am eternally grateful for their testimonies, and their examples.

“Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”  (I Timothy 6:12)

OLIVE TWIST ©2012

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