I love living out here in the country. I seldom leave my own property. Mostly because there’s such a delicious variety of things I can do right here at home. I can take a mile and a half walk by going to the end of our acreage then turning on a dirt road that leads nowhere except for a long-deserted house. We have no neighbors on that side of the place and no cars ever drive down the road. On that walk I will never, ever, see another human. I could walk stark naked if I wanted. I’ve been tempted to try this just for the hell of it but figure the chiggers and ticks would be really bad, not to mention sunburn.
If I walked two miles in the opposite direction (wearing clothes for this walk) I pass Billy Cobb’s house where he may be sitting on the porch and we can catch up on town news. Billy was older than God twenty years ago when we bought our place. He’s never lived anywhere but this part of Wood County. He knows all the local snakes as well as squirrels and their habits. He knows who owned which piece of land going several generations back and what happened to them.
A little farther and I can stop at the pasture with cows and then across the street some horses. The cows always have tags on their ears with numbers. I call them by name as I greet them. “Hey, 279, how are you doing today? Hello 283, what’s new?”
When I turn onto another county road I will pass more cows. These are older and larger and don’t have numbers on them. These must be valued members of the family with real names like “Bossy” or perhaps they are too old to have commercial value and don’t need tags. Then I come to a couple of horses at the old gray abandoned house that’s falling down. This is where I usually turn around and head back home after petting the horses a bit. The turning around house is also my “rest stop”. It’s where I can stop to pee if I need to. It’s so far off the beaten path I’m never afraid a car will come by and see me but there’s a large bush if I need one to hide behind.
This road has been the most extraordinary example of what passes for progress around here. It used to be paved with asphalt but had cracks and potholes that made walking and driving difficult. So the county sent in bulldozers to rip up the asphalt and carry it off. That was two years ago and we’ve finally realized they don’t intend to resurface the road. The dirt road is actually smoother than when it was asphalt and potholes.
Sometimes Beaven will insist we walk up the road just a little farther to see the donkey. We used to take him an apple but he started getting bossy about it so we cut him off. Our dogs always started an argument with him and usually lost. Donkeys hate dogs. A lot of the farmers out here keep donkeys in with their cows to protect their herds from coyotes.
The dogs love to go on walks with us. They visit the cows and sniff everything as though there was some marvelous thing only they could detect, some dimension beyond mere smell. If there is anything dead in the road Girlfriend will insist on lying on her back and rubbing herself into the carcass. Her favorite is dead skunks and the older, the better. She will roll around on the carcass every single time she passes it until it has dissolved into nothingness and still she will return to the same spot for days afterwards. Friday hikes his leg and pees on every blade of grass he passes and we marvel at his bladder size. Annie likes to bark at the cows and pretend she’s hot stuff. Girlfriend will go off to God Knows Where and we’ll lose sight of her for a while but she always shows back up, usually wet. The dogs know every pond along the route.
The rain this year has really been good for us. The farmers have had three cuttings of hay so far and it looks like they might even get four. Last year at this time, Billy told us some of them were selling off their cows because they couldn’t feed them. But things are looking better this year. Now we see signs posted on gates offering hay for sale. Everybody has plenty this year.
I have started buying my eggs from a farm about four miles from our house. I went to get some eggs last week and the egg lady told me her hens got too old and quit laying. She has replaced them with new hens but those are still too young. I’ll have to wait a month or so for eggs from these hens. All I could think of was, "Chickens go through menopause? Who knew?” I was blown away by the idea. Of course they do. It only makes sense. The egg lady went on to tell me that right after they quit laying a woman came by asking if she had any chickens for sale. She wanted them to control her grasshopper problem. So she bought the menopausal chickens and took them home to spend the rest of their lives eating juicy grasshoppers.
I like that idea. It reminds me of when they send old racehorses past their prime to the stud farms to spend their time eating, making new racehorses and generally goofing off.
Maybe I have already reached this level of life. Maybe this is where old accountants and engineers go when they have passed their prime. Here I can walk where I want and write whenever I please. Beaven has a huge barn to house his toys and all the time in the world to play with them. Not a bad pasture to get put into. Our version of All the Grasshoppers You Can Eat.
About Me
- Jane
- I'm pretty much a typist for the Holy Spirit. I try to put those things into words in a blog called Jane's Journey. I have another blog for recipes called My Life in Food. Also Really Cool Stuff features Labyrinths and other things like how to fry an egg on the sidewalk.(first step: don't do it on the sidewalk, use a skillet) Come along with me as I careen through life.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Lost
For all those who hurried back this week because I said last Wednesday that, with any luck, somebody in my family would do something incredibly stupid and I could write about it: Well, I guess I have to admit it was me who did the most stupid thing this week.
I lost my cell phone. It turned up after six days. It was a long six days.
By an interesting God-incident the lectionary for Sunday was the parable of the Lost Sheep and Coin, found in Luke 15. I heard this scripture about four times last week between two different worship services, the Children’s Story and other readings. Apparently the theme for my week was going to be “Lost.” May I say that I completely understand how God, the Great Shepherd, mourns for a lost sheep. If God feels anything close to the way I felt losing my cell phone, lost sheep like you and me must be on God’s mind all the time. I was obsessed. I couldn’t think of anything but what calls I was missing and how much it would cost to replace the damned thing. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the stupid phone.
And I have to say I went to the most extreme of all actions to find it. Yes, I cleaned my house.
My stepmother, who raised me, always told me that if I lost something I should clean my house and I would find it. Regrettably, she was always right.
I’ve lost my wedding ring a couple of times. And both times I was eventually reduced to tearing the vacuum cleaner bag apart and looking through it. What is all that stuff, anyway? It’s totally unrecognizable but always seems to have the same character….it’s always a gray mass of bits of cat hair and dog dandruff mixed with sand and popcorn kernels. But never a wedding ring.
I sighed and realized it was past time to clean anyway. Maybe God was playing a trick on me. Maybe my stepmother, now in heaven herself, put the idea into God’s head. I can see her going up to the old man with the beard sitting at the master control panel of the universe flipping switches and pushing buttons and whispering in his ear to do something to make Jane clean her nasty house.
We checked all the usual places I leave the phone. Then all the unusual places, like the time I found my glasses outside on top of the BBQ grill. We looked in both cars--two or three times, each time with a flashlight. We called both daughters thinking I might have left it at their houses. Around the middle of the week we got serious. Beaven got on the Internet and checked our cell phone account. He found out the last conversation I had on the phone was 42 minutes with a lady we met on a hurricane Katrina recovery trip. He asked me where had I sat while I was on the phone with her. Well, that was a dumb question because it’s a cell phone, for goodness sakes, it’s portable; I was all over the house. I was everywhere. I was at my desk getting paper. I was in the kitchen eating an orange. I was in front of the TV writing stuff down. And I was on the phone over half an hour. The beauty of a cell phone is that you can go everywhere with it
I was going to have to look everywhere for the phone.
Beaven and I seldom have guests and we don’t have to answer to anyone about the cleanliness of our house. We each have a “nest” by our chair where we collect various reading materials. We don’t worry about putting these things away because we intend to get them out and read them again. But I realized my phone could be mixed in with all that stuff. By the time I gathered up travels books and electronics magazines you could see the floor. But no cell phone.
I finally had to bite the bullet and clean off my desk. It took about two days. Have I mentioned I’m writing a book? It has about 26 chapters and I don’t write linear, no-- I write a little on all 26 chapters at the same time. Usually I can find something on my desk by looking sideways at the piles. But nothing the size and color of the phone showed. I gathered up about five two-foot piles of stacks of papers from the top of the desk, sat down on the living room floor and went piece by piece, making decisions over each piece. Throw or keep? Keep where? When I get to this point I become a very organized person. I have files for most papers I keep. I even have a folder marked “Ideas to Ponder.” I’ve never actually taken that file and pondered them but, still, it’s nice to think someday I will. At the end of this process there’s always one big box for things that defy labels. In this box I might store the 1996 Commencement program from Perkins School of Theology or the newspaper clipping about the death of Dr. Katharina Dalton, the gynecologist who discovered PMS, or a map of all the counties in Texas. Some things are just hard to know where to put them but you can’t throw them away. At least I can’t. Hence my tiny little problem.
When I finally got everything cleaned off the top of my desk I was so impressed that I took a picture of it. You’ll notice how clean the surface of my desk is. That’s because it seldom sees daylight. It’s never exposed to air.
By this time I was feeling a little better about the lost phone. I had found some money in with all the flotsam and jetsam of the desk. There was an envelope with a $20 bill in it. I remembered carefully saving it a couple of years ago because someone had written “Elisabeth” on it in tiny letters. I wanted to save it and give it to my granddaughter some day. Then I found a one-pound coin left from a trip to London. At the current exchange rate, it’s worth almost $2. So I had $22 toward a new phone. Things weren’t totally hopeless.
A couple of hours after I finished my desk and taking a picture of it, apparently having satisfied my stepmother in heaven, I was released from my torture. Beaven found my phone. And he found it in the best possible way-- by losing his own. As he was leaving for the store, he took his own cell phone, lay it down on the seat of the car and watched it fall between the seats. Knowing the phone was there he reached in, felt around and pulled up a phone. It was mine. Digging around another time produced his. Not only did he find my phone but he did so in a way that left me blameless. Thank you, Jesus.
Amen
I lost my cell phone. It turned up after six days. It was a long six days.
By an interesting God-incident the lectionary for Sunday was the parable of the Lost Sheep and Coin, found in Luke 15. I heard this scripture about four times last week between two different worship services, the Children’s Story and other readings. Apparently the theme for my week was going to be “Lost.” May I say that I completely understand how God, the Great Shepherd, mourns for a lost sheep. If God feels anything close to the way I felt losing my cell phone, lost sheep like you and me must be on God’s mind all the time. I was obsessed. I couldn’t think of anything but what calls I was missing and how much it would cost to replace the damned thing. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the stupid phone.
And I have to say I went to the most extreme of all actions to find it. Yes, I cleaned my house.
“… what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?”
My stepmother, who raised me, always told me that if I lost something I should clean my house and I would find it. Regrettably, she was always right.
I’ve lost my wedding ring a couple of times. And both times I was eventually reduced to tearing the vacuum cleaner bag apart and looking through it. What is all that stuff, anyway? It’s totally unrecognizable but always seems to have the same character….it’s always a gray mass of bits of cat hair and dog dandruff mixed with sand and popcorn kernels. But never a wedding ring.
I sighed and realized it was past time to clean anyway. Maybe God was playing a trick on me. Maybe my stepmother, now in heaven herself, put the idea into God’s head. I can see her going up to the old man with the beard sitting at the master control panel of the universe flipping switches and pushing buttons and whispering in his ear to do something to make Jane clean her nasty house.
We checked all the usual places I leave the phone. Then all the unusual places, like the time I found my glasses outside on top of the BBQ grill. We looked in both cars--two or three times, each time with a flashlight. We called both daughters thinking I might have left it at their houses. Around the middle of the week we got serious. Beaven got on the Internet and checked our cell phone account. He found out the last conversation I had on the phone was 42 minutes with a lady we met on a hurricane Katrina recovery trip. He asked me where had I sat while I was on the phone with her. Well, that was a dumb question because it’s a cell phone, for goodness sakes, it’s portable; I was all over the house. I was everywhere. I was at my desk getting paper. I was in the kitchen eating an orange. I was in front of the TV writing stuff down. And I was on the phone over half an hour. The beauty of a cell phone is that you can go everywhere with it
I was going to have to look everywhere for the phone.
Beaven and I seldom have guests and we don’t have to answer to anyone about the cleanliness of our house. We each have a “nest” by our chair where we collect various reading materials. We don’t worry about putting these things away because we intend to get them out and read them again. But I realized my phone could be mixed in with all that stuff. By the time I gathered up travels books and electronics magazines you could see the floor. But no cell phone.
I finally had to bite the bullet and clean off my desk. It took about two days. Have I mentioned I’m writing a book? It has about 26 chapters and I don’t write linear, no-- I write a little on all 26 chapters at the same time. Usually I can find something on my desk by looking sideways at the piles. But nothing the size and color of the phone showed. I gathered up about five two-foot piles of stacks of papers from the top of the desk, sat down on the living room floor and went piece by piece, making decisions over each piece. Throw or keep? Keep where? When I get to this point I become a very organized person. I have files for most papers I keep. I even have a folder marked “Ideas to Ponder.” I’ve never actually taken that file and pondered them but, still, it’s nice to think someday I will. At the end of this process there’s always one big box for things that defy labels. In this box I might store the 1996 Commencement program from Perkins School of Theology or the newspaper clipping about the death of Dr. Katharina Dalton, the gynecologist who discovered PMS, or a map of all the counties in Texas. Some things are just hard to know where to put them but you can’t throw them away. At least I can’t. Hence my tiny little problem.
When I finally got everything cleaned off the top of my desk I was so impressed that I took a picture of it. You’ll notice how clean the surface of my desk is. That’s because it seldom sees daylight. It’s never exposed to air.
By this time I was feeling a little better about the lost phone. I had found some money in with all the flotsam and jetsam of the desk. There was an envelope with a $20 bill in it. I remembered carefully saving it a couple of years ago because someone had written “Elisabeth” on it in tiny letters. I wanted to save it and give it to my granddaughter some day. Then I found a one-pound coin left from a trip to London. At the current exchange rate, it’s worth almost $2. So I had $22 toward a new phone. Things weren’t totally hopeless.
A couple of hours after I finished my desk and taking a picture of it, apparently having satisfied my stepmother in heaven, I was released from my torture. Beaven found my phone. And he found it in the best possible way-- by losing his own. As he was leaving for the store, he took his own cell phone, lay it down on the seat of the car and watched it fall between the seats. Knowing the phone was there he reached in, felt around and pulled up a phone. It was mine. Digging around another time produced his. Not only did he find my phone but he did so in a way that left me blameless. Thank you, Jesus.
“When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’
Amen
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Don't Bleed on the Carpet
We got a new playground at our church a couple of weeks ago. All the kids are still excited about it and were running straight for it the minute the cars pulled into the parking lot. This included my own two grands, Sarah and Essie.
Almost the minute they left my sight a couple of kids came running to me to announce that Sarah had fallen. My only and immediate question was “Is she bleeding?” I could hear screaming in the background but screaming doesn’t really tell me anything. We had a long established rule in our family that you had to be either bleeding or throwing up to get any attention from me. But I’m not the only mother with this attitude. Another woman that day told me her rule was that there had to be blood or smoke involved. I’m not sure where she stood on the throwing up part.
Elizabeth once busted her lip open Easter morning running around looking for eggs and the first thing out of my mouth was “Don’t bleed on your Easter dress. Bend over. Don’t get blood on your dress.” I was always one of those warm and fuzzy mothers. If you are a mother, I’m sure you understand. The two main rules in our house when my kids were little were that you had to be 18 to eat in the living room and “Don’t bleed on the carpet.”
Call me hard-hearted. But my father was a doctor in WWII and it took a lot of blood to get his attention. I once made the mistake of falling and cutting my head open during his favorite television show, Gunsmoke, the one hour of the week it was nearly impossible to get his attention. I walked into the room with blood streaming down my face (being very carefully to not bleed on the carpet) and I swear this is true: he looked up and calmly told me to wash my face and he’d take a look at it when the next commercial came on.
So, you might understand my indifference to scrapes and bruises.
The first time Elizabeth needed stitches we took her to the Emergency Room. After we got the bill for that we made a rule that anything requiring stitches had to be done during office hours on a weekday so we could get it in with a simple office visit. They’re much cheaper. She once barely squeezed in one set of stitches around 4:30 on a Friday but we made it. Then, of course, there was a second appointment to have the stitches removed. I quickly decided I could take them out myself and did from then on. Taking stitches out is the easiest thing in the world, I don’t know why they want you to have a professional do it.
That’s probably something they should teach you in Mother School: taking stitiches out as well as how to stitch up a cut arm or leg. I’m not sure I would risk stitching a cut lip myself, what with the possibility of future beauty pageants and all. Facial stitches might be too difficult but I’m fairly sure I could stitch up a leg myself if I had a little training. My sister actually did stitch up her own leg once. I’ll bet it was during Gunsmoke.
I’m kind of out of other witty things to say. I write this on the sixth anniversary of 9/11. It’s a kind of a bummer day and I won’t bore you with my political opinion since you probably already know it. If not, go to the archives to my March 20th posting titled “Marching” about the day I walked in my first peace demonstration.
I don’t have time to relax and think of anything more. We’re building a deck in the back to get in shape for our mission trip to Mississippi in a month. I’m finishing the floor and tomorrow we’ll put the stairs in. Then maybe I’ll sheetrock the garage.
In the meantime I’ll try to find something funny to say next week.
With any luck, someone in my family will do something incredibly stupid or embarrassing.
Almost the minute they left my sight a couple of kids came running to me to announce that Sarah had fallen. My only and immediate question was “Is she bleeding?” I could hear screaming in the background but screaming doesn’t really tell me anything. We had a long established rule in our family that you had to be either bleeding or throwing up to get any attention from me. But I’m not the only mother with this attitude. Another woman that day told me her rule was that there had to be blood or smoke involved. I’m not sure where she stood on the throwing up part.
Elizabeth once busted her lip open Easter morning running around looking for eggs and the first thing out of my mouth was “Don’t bleed on your Easter dress. Bend over. Don’t get blood on your dress.” I was always one of those warm and fuzzy mothers. If you are a mother, I’m sure you understand. The two main rules in our house when my kids were little were that you had to be 18 to eat in the living room and “Don’t bleed on the carpet.”
Call me hard-hearted. But my father was a doctor in WWII and it took a lot of blood to get his attention. I once made the mistake of falling and cutting my head open during his favorite television show, Gunsmoke, the one hour of the week it was nearly impossible to get his attention. I walked into the room with blood streaming down my face (being very carefully to not bleed on the carpet) and I swear this is true: he looked up and calmly told me to wash my face and he’d take a look at it when the next commercial came on.
So, you might understand my indifference to scrapes and bruises.
The first time Elizabeth needed stitches we took her to the Emergency Room. After we got the bill for that we made a rule that anything requiring stitches had to be done during office hours on a weekday so we could get it in with a simple office visit. They’re much cheaper. She once barely squeezed in one set of stitches around 4:30 on a Friday but we made it. Then, of course, there was a second appointment to have the stitches removed. I quickly decided I could take them out myself and did from then on. Taking stitches out is the easiest thing in the world, I don’t know why they want you to have a professional do it.
That’s probably something they should teach you in Mother School: taking stitiches out as well as how to stitch up a cut arm or leg. I’m not sure I would risk stitching a cut lip myself, what with the possibility of future beauty pageants and all. Facial stitches might be too difficult but I’m fairly sure I could stitch up a leg myself if I had a little training. My sister actually did stitch up her own leg once. I’ll bet it was during Gunsmoke.
I’m kind of out of other witty things to say. I write this on the sixth anniversary of 9/11. It’s a kind of a bummer day and I won’t bore you with my political opinion since you probably already know it. If not, go to the archives to my March 20th posting titled “Marching” about the day I walked in my first peace demonstration.
I don’t have time to relax and think of anything more. We’re building a deck in the back to get in shape for our mission trip to Mississippi in a month. I’m finishing the floor and tomorrow we’ll put the stairs in. Then maybe I’ll sheetrock the garage.
In the meantime I’ll try to find something funny to say next week.
With any luck, someone in my family will do something incredibly stupid or embarrassing.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Muscle Memory
Our two daughters were here this weekend. Emily hit the front door announcing that she intended to learn how to knit.
After about five minutes with an instruction book she decided I should show her. Mind you, my girls never saw me knit anything when they were kids. I don’t know where she got the idea that I knew how to knit, but a little know fact about me is that I actually do know one stitch and did indeed once produce something tangible through the knitting process.
When I was in the 7th grade I guess it was a fad or something. I’m not sure why I learned to knit, but what I am sure of is that I would never in any lifetime have had the idea of knitting on my own. I’m not the knitting type. It had to have been peer pressure or something.
And before you get the idea that I’m Craft Queen, you might need to see the one and only thing I have ever knitted in my life. It was a muffler for my father. Halfway through the project my mother took over for me. For a long time I could easily tell which half of the muffler was hers because it looked so much better than my pathetic half. Now, fifty years later, (aren’t you amazed that after 50 years I not only still have this muffler but can FIND it?) the yarn has broken in spots resulting in a few holes so that Mother’s half is now equally pathetic as mine. About the only way you can tell two different people worked on it is that somewhere about the middle of the scarf we either picked up five stitches or dropped five stitches. That part is highly noticeable.
So Emily was startled when I picked up the needles and started knitting my little head off. I’m not sure who was more amazed, Emily or myself. Because--and this is the astounding thing: it all came back to me. Something I did briefly almost 50 years ago was literally right there at my fingertips. Emily turned to her sister in a reverential and awe-struck voice, “Elizabeth, you’ve got to come here and see this. Mom knows how to knit!” You would have thought I had just performed brain surgery on our kitchen table.
It’s called muscle memory, I think. My brain had long forgotten how to knit but my muscles remembered. When I tried to tell Emily what I was doing, I couldn’t put it into words. And if I slowed down and watched myself, I couldn’t follow what my hands were doing. In other words, my brain wasn’t in charge, my muscles were.
It was one of those times where your brain gets to go on vacation and other body parts step in to take over. I love it. The brain is highly overrated anyway.
This same weekend, Elizabeth wanted to plan a trip to Europe and we decided to go with her. One of the things we did after my knitting demonstration (which, by the way, lasted about 20 minutes. We’re pretty short on attention span between Emily and myself), was to leaf through about a zillion travel books on Europe.
One of the places Elizabeth wants to go on the trip is Scotland. I couldn’t build up much enthusiasm for the place. Out of the zillion books there wasn’t much said about visiting the country. But, after everybody left, Beaven checked the internet. He found a tour guide in Scotland that will take you to see Loch Ness. I yawned inside. Even the idea of seeing the Loch Ness Monster didn't do it for me. But when he mentioned visiting Pre-historic Stones in Scotland I snapped to attention. Yes, snapped. Muscle Memory took over and I went straight to the bookcase in the living room and my hand immediately pulled out one of my favorite books: “In Search of Stones” by M. Scott Peck. This had to have been muscle memory because we have about four bookcases, each crammed with such a variety of books that it’s laughable to think anyone could find a specific book in our house wth less than a week's time and a map.
I read this book around ten years ago. Then re-read it. And re-re-read it. There are many themes in it. The author is one of the self-help gurus of the 80's so there's a little head shrinking in the book that's unavoidable. But it spends a lot of time talking about the Pre-historic, Neolithic Stones of the Celts. Stonehenge is only one example of them.
Something in this book draws me to it. When I was trying to figure it out I thought back to the times I’ve visited the Mayan ruins in Guatemala at Tikal and Quirigua and also at Copan, Honduras. I was part of a whole group of people who wanted to visit the ruins so it wasn't like I sought out the ruins. Like knitting, archeology isn't something I came up with on my own. But while the rest of my group was climbing around the stones talking about jaguar and turtle gods, I chose to sit and stay quiet. Eventually, I ended up laying down on them, waiting, listening.
I’ve found more peace in the stones of Mayan ruins than anywhere else on earth. I spent an hour in Quirigua watching a butterfly. I had a strong feeling that if I sat still long enough my soul would hear something important. Something in those stones drew me to them and I wonder if it’s a variety of muscle memory. My very bones felt a connection with the stones. There was something there.
I intend to read “In Search of Stones” yet another time before we make the trip to Scotland. Whatever waits for me there I want to be ready to listen. Maybe, as they did in Guatemala and in Honduras, the stones might sing a song to my soul.
After about five minutes with an instruction book she decided I should show her. Mind you, my girls never saw me knit anything when they were kids. I don’t know where she got the idea that I knew how to knit, but a little know fact about me is that I actually do know one stitch and did indeed once produce something tangible through the knitting process.
When I was in the 7th grade I guess it was a fad or something. I’m not sure why I learned to knit, but what I am sure of is that I would never in any lifetime have had the idea of knitting on my own. I’m not the knitting type. It had to have been peer pressure or something.
And before you get the idea that I’m Craft Queen, you might need to see the one and only thing I have ever knitted in my life. It was a muffler for my father. Halfway through the project my mother took over for me. For a long time I could easily tell which half of the muffler was hers because it looked so much better than my pathetic half. Now, fifty years later, (aren’t you amazed that after 50 years I not only still have this muffler but can FIND it?) the yarn has broken in spots resulting in a few holes so that Mother’s half is now equally pathetic as mine. About the only way you can tell two different people worked on it is that somewhere about the middle of the scarf we either picked up five stitches or dropped five stitches. That part is highly noticeable.
So Emily was startled when I picked up the needles and started knitting my little head off. I’m not sure who was more amazed, Emily or myself. Because--and this is the astounding thing: it all came back to me. Something I did briefly almost 50 years ago was literally right there at my fingertips. Emily turned to her sister in a reverential and awe-struck voice, “Elizabeth, you’ve got to come here and see this. Mom knows how to knit!” You would have thought I had just performed brain surgery on our kitchen table.
It’s called muscle memory, I think. My brain had long forgotten how to knit but my muscles remembered. When I tried to tell Emily what I was doing, I couldn’t put it into words. And if I slowed down and watched myself, I couldn’t follow what my hands were doing. In other words, my brain wasn’t in charge, my muscles were.
It was one of those times where your brain gets to go on vacation and other body parts step in to take over. I love it. The brain is highly overrated anyway.
This same weekend, Elizabeth wanted to plan a trip to Europe and we decided to go with her. One of the things we did after my knitting demonstration (which, by the way, lasted about 20 minutes. We’re pretty short on attention span between Emily and myself), was to leaf through about a zillion travel books on Europe.
One of the places Elizabeth wants to go on the trip is Scotland. I couldn’t build up much enthusiasm for the place. Out of the zillion books there wasn’t much said about visiting the country. But, after everybody left, Beaven checked the internet. He found a tour guide in Scotland that will take you to see Loch Ness. I yawned inside. Even the idea of seeing the Loch Ness Monster didn't do it for me. But when he mentioned visiting Pre-historic Stones in Scotland I snapped to attention. Yes, snapped. Muscle Memory took over and I went straight to the bookcase in the living room and my hand immediately pulled out one of my favorite books: “In Search of Stones” by M. Scott Peck. This had to have been muscle memory because we have about four bookcases, each crammed with such a variety of books that it’s laughable to think anyone could find a specific book in our house wth less than a week's time and a map.
I read this book around ten years ago. Then re-read it. And re-re-read it. There are many themes in it. The author is one of the self-help gurus of the 80's so there's a little head shrinking in the book that's unavoidable. But it spends a lot of time talking about the Pre-historic, Neolithic Stones of the Celts. Stonehenge is only one example of them.
Something in this book draws me to it. When I was trying to figure it out I thought back to the times I’ve visited the Mayan ruins in Guatemala at Tikal and Quirigua and also at Copan, Honduras. I was part of a whole group of people who wanted to visit the ruins so it wasn't like I sought out the ruins. Like knitting, archeology isn't something I came up with on my own. But while the rest of my group was climbing around the stones talking about jaguar and turtle gods, I chose to sit and stay quiet. Eventually, I ended up laying down on them, waiting, listening.
I’ve found more peace in the stones of Mayan ruins than anywhere else on earth. I spent an hour in Quirigua watching a butterfly. I had a strong feeling that if I sat still long enough my soul would hear something important. Something in those stones drew me to them and I wonder if it’s a variety of muscle memory. My very bones felt a connection with the stones. There was something there.
I intend to read “In Search of Stones” yet another time before we make the trip to Scotland. Whatever waits for me there I want to be ready to listen. Maybe, as they did in Guatemala and in Honduras, the stones might sing a song to my soul.
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