THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME...

Home. Four letters and so complicated. Home. I love that word. Home. It's where I go when things are overwhelming. Home. But it isn't a place. It's a feeling. Home. It's inside me. I've always carried it with me. Home. But sometimes it takes years to figure the simple things out...like Home.

Thirty eight years ago, when I was just 22 and pregnant with my first son I was in a place that I thought was home, waiting, like all young women do when they're focused on the changes going on inside when their life is about to change forever. I thought Home was a place. I found out that Autumn that Home is a feeling.

My Mom called to tell me that my brother, my little brother who was only just twenty, had been shot in a hunting accident. It was serious. He'd been shot at point blank range in his abdomen.

John, my husband, took me to the hospital to wait. And all I could think about was Home. I have a tendency to disassociate, to go somewhere else in my mind when things are overwhelming. Hearing a Doctor tell us that my brother was near death was overwhelming. I wanted to go Home.

I wanted to be anyplace else except that horrible, little waiting room with that exhausted young doctor telling us what was probably going to happen. He told us to go into my brother's room to say goodbye. I didn't want to. I wanted to go Home. And I couldn't. I was stuck and I had to face what was happening. Home. That was all I wanted. Home.

I remember walking down the hallway. The walls were green on the bottom, white on the top and the floor was brown linoleum. To this day I still don't like those colors together, in that combination. It was the middle of the night so the lights were dim and everything was quiet. And all I wanted was Home.

I didn't want to go into that room. I didn't want to hear the heart monitor ticking, ticking, ticking. Home. It was in my mind, a weird kind of mantra. Home. Home. Home. I couldn't breath. I couldn't move. I wanted Home.

Home was a place where it always smelled good, like cookies and wind. It was small and there was a table in the kitchen with one leg propped up with a piece of folded paper to keep it level. The table cloth was old and soft, faded and stained where I'd flipped a peanut butter and jelly sandwich over and the grape jelly left purple smudges. The windows were always open and my dog was under the table, waiting for me. Home. I just wanted to be Home.

But I walked into that room and saw my brother laying there with a tent over his middle, hiding the tubes and bandages. He was in shock and breathing so hard and shallow that it sounded like he'd been running for too long. They told me he was in a coma, but when I took his hand he squeezed it. And then, I was Home.

That was when I knew who I was going to be, where I was going to go, how I was going to get there. And the first step was knowing that I was Home. It was right there inside me...Home. It was always there, my little house with the lop sided table and cookie smells. Home was always inside and not a place.

He lived. It wasn't an easy thing for him to do. Sometimes it's easier to leave than it is to stay. Maybe he wanted to go Home too. But, instead, he stayed. Over the last 38 years he started a business, married twice, raised five children and climbed his share of mountains and slogged through more than a few valleys too. I never asked him if he knew that word, that place inside called Home.

Today I went to the hospital to see him again, sick again. He called this afternoon to tell me that he might have had a heart attack, that he was in the hospital going through one test after another while they tried to figure out what was wrong.

It wasn't his heart. It wasn't his gall bladder. It was in his colon, in the place where his old scars were. There was an obstruction and it hurt!

I walked down that corridor again. The hospital has changed. The floors are carpeted, the walls are all different colors and patterns. The rooms are warm and the chairs are comfortable. We didn't have to wait in a waiting room either. All of us, his sons and one of his daughters, his wife, his friends and me...we all were there, waiting, talking, smiling, laughing.

And there it was again, Home. I wasn't in a hospital room worried about my brother. I was Home, sitting at my little table and everyone was there with me eating my famous chocolate chip cookies and drinking real milk, the kind with cream on the top. And my little brother was there, sitting at my table too.

I don't know what's going to happen. I'm here, writing and waiting to hear how he is. Before I left the hospital to come home, he took my hand and squeezed it again. He didn't feel good, but he looked right at me and smiled anyway. And there, just for a moment, he was Home too, with me.

Home. 

" I AM THE STORY TELLER...."

Last night I had a dream. I walked through all the dark places of the world where I could not see. I could feel the branches and leaves of the trees and the tall grasses and plants touching me, moving along with me as I walked a path towards a light.

The light was from the Council Fires of Father Sun, Mother Earth and Sister Moon. When I walked into the light of the fires, there were people from all the tribes, villages and places of the world there, waiting for me. Their faces carried the lines of their lives and the lives of their many peoples. They were wise and old and they waited for me.

"I am the Story Teller. I will tell you the story of the First Day of the Spring of the World, when all of you were born and the Mother Earth lived without her robes." On my shoulder was a spider, small and not easily noticed. She sat and waited, like the others, while she spun out her delicate threads.

"I was here in the beginning when the only people at the Council Fires were Father Sun, Mother Earth and Sister Moon who lived here in the Darkness together, keeping the Fires. That was when I began my First Story...the beginning of all Stories.

In the beginning Father Sun was strong and he shown with a new light so bright that the Fires were dim when he sat too close. Mother Earth was beautiful and round, pregnant with the Possibilities. Sister Moon shown with a clear, cool Light bright enough to light the evening skies. Her face was quiet and the lines upon it were easily seen, carrying the stories that she would witness. She would always be the Listener.

Mother Earth said, " I am naked. I need a robe to keep me warm for all my days." and Father Sun said, "Then we will make one." And Sister Moon listened.

Father Sun said, " I will dance across the skies, bringing light and warmth to shine on your Robe. I will give you the Birds to fly above you." And he gave to Mother Earth the Eagle, the Hawk and Owl to carry courage and all of the small birds...the Wren, The Meadowlark and Mocking Bird, The Robin and Cardinals to carry the song of the world.

And Sister Moon listened.

Mother Earth said, " I will add to my robe the Fish and Turtle, the Frog and other creatures of the Waters to create waves on the surface, to help my Robe to shine.

And Sister Moon listened.

Father Sun said, " I will give to you the Bear for strength, The Wolf and Coyote for cunning, The Cougar and Puma for power and the other large Animals for balance."

And Sister Moon listened. And then she said, " I will give you the Horse, the finest of all creatures. She will carry the Conscience and Soul of the World. She will be strong to carry this heavy load and she will be swift so that she can dance with Father Sun. And with her I will send all of the small creatures of the World to follow in her Herds...the Mouse and Deer, the Raccoon and Otter. And beside her will walk the Elk and Buffalo to ease her burden. "

And Father Sun and Mother Earth listened and were happy for Sister Moon.

And Mother Earth said, " In between, in the small spaces of the Robe of the World, I will make patterns with the Insects. They will sing, carrying the Stories to Eagle, Bear, Coyote, Elk and Horse and all the others of the World. " And then the Robe of Mother Earth was full and rich and round enough to cover her and she was happy.

And Sister Moon listened.

And Father Sun said, " I will give you one more gift. I will give you the threads, the sinews that will hold the Robe together and make the stories One Story. " And he brought into the Light of the Council Fires the Spider. She was so small that the others could not see her at first so he gave her a special Gleam of Light called Silk. She always carried the Threads of Silk with her so that others would feel her there. And he said, " Spider, I give you the Words, carried in the Silk. You will give a strand to all the Trees, Grasses, Birds, Animals and Places of the World. Your Silks will hold the Robe together. How you weave it will make the Patterns of the Stories of the World."

And Spider said, " But I am too small. How will I do this? They cannot see me."

And Father Sun said, " You will visit all of them and tell them their Story, giving them their piece of Silk.

And Sister Moon listened.

And so Spider went to Eagle and he said, " You are small. I will eat you." And she said, " I have a story to tell you before you take my life." He said, " Very good. I will listen." and while she spoke, she attached a Thread to the feather on the Eagle's wing. And when he flew away to tell his story to the other Birds and creatures of the air, forgetting that he was going to eat the Spider, he carried the Silk and it stuck to each of the others and they made it part of their stories too.

And then Spider went to Bear and he said, "You are small. I will crush you." And she spoke to him, saying, "I have your story to tell before you take my life." And he said, "Then tell it to me." and while she spoke his story, she attached another Thread to him, on his broad back, tangled in the soft, bright hair. And when he left, forgetting about the little Spider, the Threads flew out behind him and became part of the stories of all the creatures of the land...the Elk, Buffalo, Coyote and Wolf, Puma and Bob Cat.

And then Spider went to the Horse and Horse said, " You will ride with me. Your Silk will become my mane and tail and we will, together, finish the Robe of Mother Earth. I will be the Conscience, teaching all the Children of the World to know right and wrong, to know how to carry in their hearts kindness and thoughtfulness." And Spider rode upon the back of Horse, spinning her Threads into Horse's mane and tail so that all the Stories would be together.

And Father Sun watched, singing the Stories across the sky everyday.

And Mother Earth wore her Robe, happy to be, quietly moving in her own circle to the music of Father Sun.

And Sister Moon listened, watched and was the Witness to the Story, smiling sometimes and crying others as we all do when a Story is told.

" I am the Story Teller. My story is never done..."

....and that was my Dream, last night.

A TRANSLATED PAVLOVIAN RESPONSE...

I have a Pavlovian reaction to vacuum cleaners. (Intrigued, aren't you?) After spending the past fifteen or so years living with a half coyote/half dog, I've become an expert on vacuum cleaners. Newman made more hair than any other animal I've ever had the privilege of living with. I sometimes think he was so thin, not because of his coyote heritage, but because he spent most of his energy making a hair coat.

Most dogs shed out their hair in the Spring and grow a thick coat for the Winter. Hair in the Spring is normal. You brush and groom, brush and groom and, in a few weeks, it's over. "Hair Anxiety" drops to a more manageable level and you move on with your year. But Newman did what I called The Big Blow Out every year. That's when he would make his nests for Gypsy too. Was it a coyote thing? I never knew since I had no way to compare his behaviors to a wild coyote.

But that wasn't where it stopped. He would make hair...and make hair...and make hair...and make hair. Over the years we had at least eight vacuum cleaners that his hair blew out. That averages out to a new vacuum cleaner every two years. Expensive vacuums, cheap vacuums, made for picking up pet hair vacuums, industrial vacuums...nothing made it through the "Newman Test". I even resorted to using a wet/dry vac to clean my house. Blew that out too. And that's why I have a Pavlovian Response to a new vacuum cleaner.

Every time I bought a new one (by the way, I was really, really good at disassembling vacuums, replacing belts and parts...anything it took to keep the newest vacuum going as long as possible.) I would clean and clean and clean. I'd vacuum everything! The carpets were always first, of course. But then came the furniture, walls, blinds, fan blades, pillows, backs of paintings...EVERYTHING! I knew the vacuum was going to die sooner rather than later so I wanted to get my licks in as much as possible before the changing of the belts and cleaning of the parts began. It was very rewarding!

I loved the three or four months of unimpaired vacuuming. Aaaahhhhh, the clean air and carpets, the clean furniture and walls...it was heaven! Over those years I learned to love BEGINNINGS. I found out it was fun to work with a good tool that, even though it was doomed to an unusual demise, was going to make me very happy in the beginning and then was going to stretch my patience and force me into that place outside my comfort zone where I had to learn. I didn't really want to learn about vacuums. It was a forced issue that became part of the journey we had with Newman living with us. After a while it was a running family joke with bets taken on the side about how long it would be before I had to start taking it apart to keep it going. I have no doubt at all that, if I am given Grandchildren, I will have some really funny stories to tell them about how I learned to be a vacuum cleaner expert!

Mind you, I've always been one of those people who loved to start something ; school, a painting, a new garden, most anything. So having this Pavlovian response to a new vacuum cleaner probably wasn't all that unexpected. But it also taught me patience, made me even more creative in how I stretched my dollars for parts, forced me to learn more about how machines run...something I'm not easily drawn to. The operative word in that sentence was PATIENCE. It was either let myself get angry (which I admit to doing a lot of until we got to our fourth vacuum cleaner.) or make myself look at it as a game.

I have Newman to thank for setting me up for more fun while I learn how to be a better horseman! His hair coat and all of those vacuum cleaners that didn't pass the "coyote tough test" set me up for success further down the road.

Whenever things get intense, and things DO get intense sometimes with horses, I remind myself of the vacuum cleaners that I've learned how to repair over the years, the negotiating skills that I've built when dealing with vacuum cleaner companies and the stores that sell the machines, the patience and the laughter that comes from beginning to see it as a game. I smile, things lighten up and off we go together to play instead of to work.

So, in a convoluted way, I guess you could say that I now have a translated Pavlovian response to Parelli and Natural Horse-Man-Ship. I get to keep practicing my sends, my allows, my bring backs and it's all a game that, hopefully, when it gets "broken", I can call or write or read or watch a video that will help me to find the "parts" to fix the game. Now the bets being taken are about when I will have a breakthrough or when I will reach a new level.

Just one more thing. After Newman left this world and moved on to the next, he took one more vacuum cleaner with him. I thought about burying it with him as sort of a monument for archaeologists to find thousands of years from now. Think of the stories it would generate while they tried to understand why an early 21st century vacuum cleaner was buried with petrified coyote bones! But he wasn't happy when I ran the vacuum. It was time to exit to the world of grasses and fields when I went on one of my "vacuuming benders." So I opted to throw it out.

And now I have a new vacuum cleaner and very clean floors. Anyone want to take any bets how long this one will last?

I am, ever yours, Nancy, laughing out loud at the way things go!

WALKING THE ARTIST'S PATH...

Sometimes you make connections in ways you don't expect. My husband was reading the news on line this morning and found an obituary for the father of a friend of mine, from college. We'd lost track of each other for more than forty years. I still think about her ever so often, probably because of the time of life that we met. We were both teenagers just out of high school and really excited about being on our own, out in the big world. And, like all young people that age, we had no idea how short that time was. We'd always been young so what could happen?

I didn't know that the reason she wasn't at school the next semester was because she'd transferred to the Arts Institute in Kansas City, quite a prestigious school here in the Midwest. She never said goodbye. She was just gone. So, again in that way that the very young have, I went on with my life. I adjusted. But I never forgot about her either. For a brief time we were best friends, together every free moment, probably because the world was bigger than we thought it was going to be. It was much easier to deal with the unexpected attention we got as young girls when we could come back to her room and hide for a while to talk about it and reassure each other.

I sent her a letter on line giving her my condolences for loosing her Dad, a very nice person. I'd met him when I went home with her for my first Thanksgiving away from my home. I remember him being very intelligent, kind, funny and obviously very proud of his talented daughter. Her relationship with her parents was quite different than mine, so I went home with new ideas about how families were supposed to be. It was one of my first experiences in the home of another adult friend and quite an eye opener for me. Her family gave me a new direction. I was going to learn how families, healthy families, were supposed to function. I'd known at a deep level for a long time that my nuclear family was not an ideal situation.

I'm not going to dwell here on my own past. I don't identify myself with it anymore. But I will say that it was the first time that I made a truly adult decision to break the patterns that I had been raised in. My path had changed because of one long weekend in a small town, at her house. I was going to learn how to be my own person.

When that relationship ended so quickly, I was devastated, but only for a short time. It was the sixties and everything was changing...the whole world was turning upside down, or at least it seemed that way. It was a time to experiment in ways that hadn't happened before. I was going to walk the path of the artist, so I jumped in head first and never looked back. I grew my hair out until it hit the backs of my knees, found my best friend and moved in with him and his roommate.

You're wondering where this is taking you, what it has to do with horses. One of the few things that I decided to carry on to my "new path" was my love for animals. You see, they never lied to me. Their respect for me, their love for me was real. An animal...dog, horse, cat, birds...has no hidden itinerary. They either like you or they don't. And that was what I was looking for, that honesty and loyalty. It was another way of making my own patterns. Their truth became my truth. They existed in the here and now, living as they were in that moment.

That doesn't mean they didn't have memories of the past. They do, and those experiences made it easier for them to make better decisions in their present. It's a model I'm still following. My job is to improve, to make my better into my best. Their job is to be my partner. The best part of that relationship is, aside from the endless opportunities to grow, learn, change...to be better, healthier physically, mentally, emotionally, is the time I spend with them.

My horse is a true reflection of who I am. I can't avoid it. They become who I am every single day. And when I'm incongruent because I forget and try to "put on a false face" (one of the old patterns I grew up with), they turn and walk away. It's as simple as that. Horses can be very blunt.

You can't flim flam a horse. "Horses teach humans and humans teach horses." Eight Principals of Horse-Man-Ship. You see where I'm taking you?

Part of my rediscovery of who I want to be instead of who I was "supposed to be" has taken me into places I didn't know were there...inside myself. I've at last found a group, an organization, that I can be a part of that has no hidden agenda. It isn't hard for me to say "I am Parelli" anymore. It's become a philosophy. I"m doing my best to take it in to every part of my life. They've said that their goal is to make a better world for horses AND humans. Today some part of that idea clicked into my new path, one of my new patterns and I got it.

I have no doubt that there will be all kinds of curves, hills, dips and maybe even mountains and canyons for me to deal with. And I can't wait! Not one day has been dull since I've started my life with horses. I will have all kinds of questions to answer, lessons to learn and patterns to follow. It's an opportunity for never ending self improvement.

I remember driving home from my Friend's house. It wasn't that long a drive but it seemed to go on and on to me. We didn't talk much, probably because we were both tired. She fell asleep while I drove and thought about our weekend. It was such an important beginning for me.

I never had a chance to tell her folks how much I appreciated that weekend, well at least not in any profound way. I wrote a nice thank you note the way that my Grandmother had taught me. But I never told them about the change in me, probably because I thought there was plenty of time to do that later. Time is endless when you're young, and that's the way it should be too or we wouldn't take our leaps and make our changes. I can't regret what I couldn't help. Life makes unexpected jumps sometimes.

Today I had a chance to close a circle by writing to her and her Mom. She's "friend-ed" me on Facebook so I'm looking forward to getting to know her again, to catch up. I've had a chance to, at last, say my thank you for starting me down a better path just by being who they were as a family.

I can't wait for tomorrow! Even better, I love where I am right now!

I am, ever yours, Nancy, smiling and pondering the way things go

HAMMERS, WASPS AND BREAKING THE PATTERN

Panic...PANIC! Stop the presses...sirens going off...hands in the air PANIC! Ever so often I fall into one of those deep holes of " I just don't think I can do this!". Self doubt overwhelms my horizon and I shut down. Actually, I get really, really busy. Closets get cleaned out. Floors get polished. Even the silver gets polished, what little I have! If I keep my feet moving then I don't have to face the mountain I've built up in front of myself to keep me from moving forward. It's an old story, isn't it?

I'm not learning if I'm not outside my comfort zone. Being outside my comfort zone equals danger. Danger means monsters in the closet and under the bed so DON'T GO THERE! I know, intellectually, that when I build up all of my defenses, my "what if?"s and "but I can't..."s, it's just my brain saying "I don't trust you to keep me alive, so I'm taking over by sabotaging you emotionally." And it works too! I "get busy doing stuff" , totally unimportant stuff (yeah, it nice to have a clean closet, but that kind of thing can wait ) to keep myself from making my good better and my better best.

And pretty soon I've talked myself into thinking that not only am I not improving, not learning, but that I don't deserve to! By spending so much of my time becoming a better horse-woman, I'm being lazy. Backwards, isn't it? I've never worked so hard, physically, in my life to be better for this crew of mine. Most of the time I'm very happily obsessed! In fact, I usually have to make myself slow down because I have a tendency to be a direct line thinker. There isn't anything more "not horse" than being direct line.

My excuse this time around is the weather. It's been over 100 every single day for more than a month here. The land is fried. Crops are failing. The grass is brown and the hay crop was less than half of what it was last year. When it's up to 105, 108 or 111 (like it was yesterday!) it's hard to find a way to Play Games with my horses. We're all doing well to just slog through the day. It really is like being hit with a hot griddle every time I walk out the door.

I have a tendency to get angry at the things I can't change...like the weather. And that's just another way to "Stop the presses! Hold the stage! Cheese it!". Sooner or later I end up like I was this morning, crying out in the barn while I did my morning chores, convinced that I was a failure and I might as well quit!

Pretty effective as a form of self sabotage, isn't it?

It may have been the hammer I knocked off of the shelf, landing on my toe. Or it may have been the wasp that stung me when I jumped, trying to keep from getting hit by the hammer. And those buggers never sting just once! But something made me "hit the wall" and wake up. I came up to the surface, took a deep breath of air and said " Wait a minute. What's going on here? " (along with a few, more than blue, words uttered because now I had two stings on my neck and a swollen toe!) How interesting that, just at the height of my self doubt epiphany, I manage to bruise myself and get myself stung. Sort of a "HEY, NANCY! YOU THERE?" shout out.

While I was inside, putting cold packs on the toe and vinegar on the stings, I started laughing at how funny I must have looked. Laughter always makes me breath deeply, relax. The right brain freeze attack ends and I switch to the other side, the left side, and begin to think again. I broke my own pattern!

So, I've been very effectively putting myself into the box, into the 'safe zone', keeping myself from walking towards my goal. If I were one of my students, what would I say to myself to get the engines started and the whole shebang rolling again? It was time for the inner game of Approach and Retreat! I'd Broken the Pattern with a hammer and a wasp. Step two is break it down into smaller pieces, just like I do with the horses when we've blown through a threshold, and Retreat to build confidence.

I have no idea where my threshold is that I pushed myself through. I'm still a bit blind in that area when it comes to myself. I'm guessing it's because I am so goal oriented that I push harder than I should. When it comes to becoming a better horse-woman, to building my own confidence as well as theirs, to becoming that much sought after 51% / 49% partnership that Pat Parelli talks about I NEED TO SLOW DOWN. I need to follow the tenants of  my favorite quote, "Take the time that it takes so it takes less time.", to move further down my path.

So, this morning we played. I mean we really played. I got out the water hose and we ran through the hose! I scratched all of the best itchy places. I stood around and just watched the haze on the horizon, standing next to Apache and letting everything go. I didn't scoop poop. We did grain later in the morning, like closer to noon! Shocking!

We walked out into the East pasture, the one that gave us only half the hay it did last year, crunching along on top of the dormant grasses. Ever so often we'd stop to graze (Noooooooo...I didn't eat the grass.). I'd match their energy, stand with the same leg cocked that one or the other had, and just hung out...no expectations, no itinerary. In short, I did nothing more than just try to "be" with them.

And then it happened. Apache, my Left Brain Extrovert, asked me a question. He flicked his ears at me, softened his eyes and said " Wanna play?" I was in the zone by then with my swollen toe, sore stings, wet shoes and muddy shirt. I smiled and said " Well, yeah!" and off we went. I don't know how long we played. I didn't have a watch on. Besides, time was irrelevant. This was horse play at it's best!

We walked and trotted together, played Circle game around each other, danced Sideways (a first at Liberty for us!) and walked in a backwards circle just for fun! I should put that part in caps...JUST FOR FUN! Getting it done wasn't the objective here. Having fun while we experimented was!

When I ran my hand down his back, knocking the flies off for him, he turned and nuzzled/groomed me between my shoulders (withers) while I rubbed his withers. And then we were done. He walked off, out into his lovely, long pasture to be with Lucky and Willow. And I turned and limped off towards the house, dogs in tow, with a smile on my face.

NEWMAN COMES HOME

Sometimes gifts come in unexpected packages. Nearly 16 years ago, when my son was twenty and a college student, he had one of those jobs that's an eye opener. All of us have taken a job like that while we work our way through school and launch ourselves into the adult world. His was as a truck driver and delivery person for one of those furniture rental places, where you pay stupid amounts of money for ugly furniture that you will never quite own.

One of the places that he frequently delivered to, and picked up from as well, was a trailer park. While taking furniture to and from various trailers, he noticed a puppy tied with a chain, outside one of the trailers. It spent most of it's time hiding as far under the trailer as possible, in the mud. And, over the weeks, he could see that it was getting thinner, weaker. So he made a decision that, ordinarily, I would not have supported. He stopped by the house to pick up my husband's chain cutter and, while delivering yet another sofa and chair set to another family in a trailer, he watched the one with the puppy cowering under the porch.

He found reasons to wait, looking under the hood of his truck, talking with neighbors, checking the tires of his truck...anything that he could think of to linger. Sure enough, the man who lived in the trailer came stumbling out, cussing and stopping to kick the puppy and then climbing into his beat up truck to drive away. As soon as the man had left the trailer court, my son jumped the broken fence, cut the chain and scooped up the puppy into his arms and drove towards home.

I knew something was up when he parked the truck in the driveway and burst into the house the way he did, like he used to when he was a kid. "Mom! MOM! I need some help." Nothing brings a Mother faster than those words. He'd been a man, living on his own, for a few years at that point, so I knew it was serious. I left paint brushes and a trail of turpentine across the floor of my studio, running upstairs to meet him.

"Mom. Come out here. I want to show you something." He took me by the shoulders and looked me in the eyes, smiling at me the way he always did when he really wanted to connect. " I need help with this but I can't do it without you. I can't have him at my apartment. I just stole him." Him? Stole him? Oh my...

He took me outside to the truck and opened the passenger side door for me. There on the seat was one of the sorriest looking puppies I'd ever seen. He was so weak he couldn't stand up. His coat was filthy and matted and he had scrapes and bruises on him with patches of fur missing. His ears were huge and his belly was swollen from malnutrition. The poor little guy was so frightened he tried to hide by putting his head under his front feet! He was too weak to try to get away from us.

I asked my son to, carefully, pick the puppy up and carry him inside for me. The poor little guy was just a sack of bones! While B held him, I washed him off with warm water and soap. I had to be able to see what was there under the crud before deciding whether he needed to go to the Vet's office. Taking care of strays was something we'd all been doing for years...more often cats than dogs, but sometimes snakes or turtles, birds that needed to grow a bit more before being on the their own, a prairie dog. Animals were always welcome with us.

Underneath all of the mud and crust was a beautiful golden coat and a pair of very clear brown eyes.

" I gave him a name. I'm calling him Newman." Well, no going back now. My son had stolen a dog and named him. Judging from the condition this dog was in, he did the right thing! I hugged him and said "He's perfect! He can be Gypsy's friend. I wanted another dog living here anyway." and that was that. I'd just condoned trespassing and theft in the name of love. If we were going to jail, we were going together because I had just accepted stolen property. It was one of the best things we've ever done and the beginning of a true friendship with B as an adult and all for the sake of a wiley coyote.

We started Newman out on chicken broth and a gruel of ground chicken, bones and whatever leftover vegetables I had in the refrigerator. His teeth were still baby teeth and some of them were gone (thank heavens the "person" B had stolen Newman from hadn't had him long enough to knock adult teeth out!). Newman spent most of his time in my studio, down in the walk out basement we had, hiding back behind the heater and hot water tank. I'd pick him up and take him outside several times a day to pee and poop and not once did he have an accident in the house...not once. I've never had another dog before or since who was so easy to housebreak.

When I was sure he was strong enough to ride in the car with me and strong enough to deal with the stress of going to the Vet's office, we took him in for his first exam. He was full of worms, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. And his hair coat was beginning to grow back, his eyes were clear and there were no other diseases to deal with. He had his first set of inoculations and home we went. He was so excited to leave, to get back to his house, that he stayed upstairs for the first time and explored the house with Gypsy. He wasn't just there to convalesce, he was home!

Over the weeks and months he began to grow. We guessed that he might be about Gypsy's age, not quite a year old. B came by every night to see Newman and we began to take him out for walks around the block. At first he was still so weak, his muscles were still so atrophied from being tied all the time, that he couldn't make it around the block. He had to be picked up and carried until he started to wiggle so he could get back down. That didn't last long though. He was young and recovering quickly. And he had a mate!... Gypsy!

I knew he was OK when he started to eat upstairs with Gypsy, mornings and evenings. But he also started to do something very strange. He would eat his meal and then, very solemnly, would come to me and sit right in front of me, waiting for me to acknowledge him. Then he would lean over and barf up a portion of his dinner! Eeeuw! Now what? I'd never had to deal with that kind of behavior. Then he would wag his tail, perk his ears at me and wait. What to do...what to do. He was so proud of what he was offering, I couldn't get angry. Instead, I wanted to learn more about him...about this behavior.

After talking with the Vet and being reassured that he was healthy, I talked with a friend of mine from the University, a wild life biologist. He came to visit and looked Newman over, asking questions about his history. He ran his hands over Newman, who was very curious about this new person, looked in Newman's ears and picked up his legs and feet to carefully examine. He looked at me and smiled and said "Congratulations! I think you have a coy-dog, a half coyote, half dog living with you." OH MY. Later that was confirmed by a Native American who walked through our neighborhood on his way to Haskell University. He saw me out with Gypsy and Newman, walking, and stopped me to tell me that Gypsy would be a good hunting dog, but Newman was a "junk dog", a killer of chickens and an egg sucker. I needed to get rid of him! Of course, he was seeing the coyote in Newman, not the dog.

When Newman was able to walk and run, to keep up with Gypsy, we started to take both of them up to the campus at KU, to Potter's Lake, where several other "dog" people took their dogs to let them run and play off leash, to swim in the pond and to learn how to socialize with other dogs. At first Newman was overwhelmed. He wouldn't go far from me or B and always stuck close to Gypsy. It was just a bit too much for one little coyote to take.

But the second time we went back, the real Newman began to emerge. He began to discover his legs. Newman could run! We're not talking here about the normal lope that you see a dog do, but a full out RUN! B told me that once, when he wasn't able to find Newman and had been out looking for him for a few hours, when he did find him, Newman ran alongside B's jeep and B clocked him at almost 40 mph! Newman could run so fast in his youth that no dog could keep up with him.

He would run up to the other dogs at the park and tease them into trying to chase him, and then he would turn up the speed and leave them eating dust every single time. He flew! He was a beautiful, golden streak who's feet never touched the ground. He could dart to one side, flip up in the air and do a 180 turn and come down running so fast that other dogs would end up standing there looking around for him in bewilderment. "What happened? Where did he go?" When Newman discovered the freedom of being able to move like that completely unfettered, Newman discovered his smile. In all his years, his smile never again left his face. He was rescued. He was safe. He was home. He was free!

Living with a coyote has been adventure, to say the least.He could jump onto the table tops and the counters like a goat with springs in his feet. He loved the full moon and would howl at it, sitting in the middle of my Grandmother's dining room table. My solution to that? I put layers of table cloths on the table. There are still a few scratches on the top of the table and I treasure them! Who else can say that a coyote used to sit in the middle of their Grandmother's dining room table and howl at the full moon? What an awesome history to add to our Thanksgiving dinners, when we always talk about families and our past.

Every year he would capture one of my feather pillows and rend it end from end, using the feathers to make a nest for Gypsy, usually back behind a bed or the rocking chair and, once when the closet door had been left open, in the back of my closet! I would come home and find him sitting in the door of the room where his nest for Gypsy was, wagging his tail and waiting for my approval. I would follow him to wherever that year's nest was and find Gypsy there, curled up in the middle of it. I'd say " Oh my. This is the best nest, the best den, I've ever seen"...which was true because I'd never seen any other nest! And then they would jump up out of the middle of it, running off down the hallway leaving a whirl of feathers flying through the air after them.

So many stories to tell, living with a magical creature like Newman. There's the day he ate a birthday cake that I'd left sitting back as far as possible on the kitchen counter to cool, so I could ice it. I came back upstairs after folding some laundry and there he was, laying back under the kitchen table as far as he could go, curled up in a teeny, tiny "you can't see me" ball. That was always his guilty body language. When I stopped to look around to see what he had done, I saw the cake on the counter with the whole center eaten out. There was a perfect circle of air in the middle of my cake and crumbs all over Newman's face! All these years later I'm still laughing about that one!

After we'd moved out of town, out to our little bit of Paradise, the adventures continued but with the ante upped. Newman faced off with wild coyotes, making sure they knew this was his territory. Sometimes the howling and growling was fierce, but he always won. And there was the day he and Gypsy had disappeared for hours. They'd, all three of them, lived out here for years with no fences, leashes or collars. I never worried about them because this really was a dog's paradise. There wasn't anyplace to go to that was any better than this. But I do admit that I was worried by the time I saw them, coming down the path I keep mowed through the East pasture. Newman was dragging a partial deer carcass, Joe running alongside and Gypsy riding on top! All three of them were so rank that it took three baths on three days afterwards to get the horrible smells off of them, but until they had all laid out in the front of the house, chewing on body parts and rolling on the skin for hours.

At the end, Newman was crippled with terrible arthritis, the curse of all runners who've worn their joints out with joy. He ate his dinner with his bowl placed on top of a pile of books and a dictionary so he could keep his balance. He couldn't lean over anymore to eat from his bowl on the ground without falling over. We decided to call him the only literary coyote in Kansas!

He's gone now. Four days ago Newman slipped out of his beautiful, golden skin and left this Earth behind. His legs no longer worked. We had to help him up just to get him out the door. He was completely incontinent at the end too, something that was mortifying for him. He never dirtied up his den in all the years he lived with us. He died in my arms, looking out towards the horizon. He left this world laying out under his favorite cedar, outside our front door. The flowers and grass were deep enough there for him to hide, something that he always did once he came to live with us out here on our preserve. Over the years his wild side became more and more prevalent. He didn't cuddle. He was too adult for that. He had a job and he did it, right up to the end.

When the Vet's truck drove up our long drive, Newman dragged himself up onto his front legs and he barked, to let us know someone was here, invading our territory.

He died here in the evening, laying in his yard doing his job. At the end, just before he died, he at last laid his head into my lap and looked at me with his ever present smile. It was the first and last time he ever did that. I was the alpha female and, in his world, you never did that with the alpha. He was gone. He had, at last, run right out of his skin to run under the full moon we had that evening. His end was perfectly Newman, just exactly the way it was supposed to be. He died without a collar on. I hadn't used a leash to walk with him for almost ten years. Out here he was free, no chains ever again for our coyote. That was our gift to him.

The energy in the house has changed. Somehow it's too quiet, even with Joe and Miniver here. He was an important presence that, until he was gone, we had not realized was so much a part of our new/ now old life  on our small ranch. Now he's in the Earth that he loved to run over and an apple tree grows out of his heart.

I'll miss you, Newman. It's been a privilege to have a real "junk dog" live with us, including us in his pack. I love you!

I am, always yours, Nancy...remembering

MATHA'S FLAG AND A SALUTE...

Sometimes I just plain, flat out get overwhelmed with life. Too many pots on the stove top...too many irons in the fire, too many things on my to-do list! But the Fourth of July is a place where I always stop to catch my breath and remember. It's in the middle of Summer, the middle of the year and the weather is white hot, slow and breathless.

We've had a whole month of hundred degree days with occasional breaks of "just" 95 with thunderstorms and more tornado warnings than I can count. I can't say that's classic weather, but it is Kansas weather. We're a place of extremes, so every year is different. After more than a few years of it, you just kind of learn to roll with the punches. I did turn on the AC about half way through the month. I usually can make it into July, but this year the heat was exhausting, so we've been cooking some energy, sooner than we'd planned .

I had a lot of profound things to say here, but decided instead to talk about everyday heroes. I'm not much interested in politicians. As a lot, I find nearly all of them very disappointing. And I'm not going to talk about soldiers or war either, or not much anyway. I'm going to acknowledge the quiet hero...the everyday hero that we never hear about.

He's (that's the grammatically correct 'he') the one who pays the bills, goes to work everyday, cleans the bathrooms and sweeps the carpet, mows the lawns and loves his children without complaint. He keeps the world going in a quiet way, behind the scenes, tying shoes and putting bandages on scraped knees, walks the dog and rubs your shoulders when you have a kink in your back.

She's (and that's also the grammatically correct 'she') the one who makes sure the tank is full in the car, the oil is changed on time, the horses are let out early in the morning and the stalls are cleaned everyday. She's the one who makes dinner, stretching the budget and being creative with eggs and spinach at the end of the week while you try to make it to payday. She laughs at the same old stories and calls every weekend to see how your life is going.

They (one more time, always grammatically and every other way correct) bring you bags of organic lettuce and sugar snap peas from their garden to share, pick up your mail for you when you're out of town and check to make sure the doors are still locked and mow the lawn so you can deal with the crisis that needs your attention without the mundane to distract you.

Here's to the everyday American. I salute you. And I thank you for the offer to help in small ways. "Could I carry that for you Mam?" or  "Do you need help? Are you OK?" when I pull off the road to answer my cell phone. Here's to the "people down the road" who never judge me for being a renter instead of an owner...who accept us without reference to our religious or political affiliations, who're just there to be friendly and to help when there's a stray horse in the yard who's owner we're trying to find.

And here's to old red trucks and the old guy that lives up the road that stopped by one evening just to say " I just wanted to tell you how much the Missus and I bin enjoying yor floowrs you got growin' everywhar round here. (shifting his tobacco chaw from one side of his mouth to the other) You got just about the prittiest yard round these parts." and a nice, hard hand shake and off he goes, hand waving backwards out the window of his truck!

Here's to the possibility that things can get better, that the ideals I used to believe in are still possible. Here's to the everyday man in his everyday life. Thank you America! Happy Birthday!

About our beautiful flag :  It's a funeral flag from World War Two, in memory of a young soldier named Matha Dalton. We found it at an antique show years ago in Lawrence. I'd walked around the corner of one booth and saw it laying across a chair with the end falling onto the floor. No matter what country you come from, the flag of any country should never touch the floor. It stands for all the people who've given up their lives to defend the idea of the place they live in.

I bought it from the person who had the booth along with the box it had come in, without the comments I wanted to make to the person who had left it out where it could touch the floor. When we got home, I found under the flap of the box a letter that had been written to the family of Matha Dalton after his death at the end of the War in the Pacific. The address was in Golden, Missouri.

A few weeks later we drove to Golden and stopped by the local library, which was also the local post office and sheriff's office. It was a very small, rural community. I asked if the librarian knew the family of Matha Dalton. I told her about the flag we had, that we wanted to return it if they were still in the area. As all local librarians do, she did know of a living relative. And she made the call too.

We waited for about 45 minutes, walking around the tiny town square and stopping to visit in the local cafe and hardware store. By then the whole town knew why were there and people were beginning to show up to see what would happen when we met with Granny Dalton.

Granny Dalton owned several thousand acres of farm land that she still farmed with the help of her Grandsons and some of the local teenagers. She drove up in a clean but very old and faded Ford Truck, getting out still dressed in her daily overalls and muck boots but with her hair combed and her purse on her arm.

She walked right up to me, introducing herself first to me, then to my husband and, in her blunt Missouri accent, she said "I'm Granny Dalton. I here you've got something of mine. You want to tell me the story of how you came by it?" I liked her right away. She was lean, tough and leathery with big hands and a no nonsense way about her.

We walked over to sit on the bench under a tree in front of the local cafe with a small crowd gathered up around us to hear about why we were there. It was like being inside a Clint Eastwood movie. All we needed was the right kind of music to set the stage.

After I told her how we came to have the flag, I gave her the letter. She carefully opened it up and read it out loud so everyone could hear her. Then she paused, taking a moment to wipe her eyes with her hanky, and turned to me and said " I was supposed to marry Matha when he came back from the War. We fell in love when I was fifteen and he was seventeen. Instead, he died. When they sent us his things along with this flag from the Philippines, all we got were some scorched coins they found next to him. He was burned to death."

She paused here to wipe her eyes again. She was crying and so were most of the rest of us listening. "I married his brother instead. He was a good man and I don't regret any of my life with him. We've had four good sons and two good daughters together. My oldest son was named Matha too."

"My Father in Law died in my arms of a broken heart, out in a corn field, just weeks after we got this letter from the War Department. Neither he or my Mother in Law ever recovered from the grief of loosing Matha that way. "

"You keep that flag. You've got more respect for it than his sister's ever did. They're the ones who sold it in an auction after Mom Dalton died last year. I don't speak to them no more. They sold all of Matha's things...a whole trunk of them, without saying anything to any of the rest of us. If you give it to me, I'll just die and they'll do the same again. All my kids moved away from here. Those sisters would just take it along with what I have before my children could stop 'em."

And here she paused again, looking out towards the place she'd driven from. Everyone around us sighed, waiting to hear the end of her story. Then she turned to me and said " I thank you from the bottom of my heart for caring so much that you drove all this way to bring my memories back to me. I can see you and your husband are good people, that you love each other. Do you have children?" ... an important question to ask when you've grown up in a farming community where large families are still a part of running a farm.

I told her we did, two sons, and that they were the core of our lives. She smiled, gave me a hug (drawing a sigh from the group of people around us. Granny Dalton was not one to express herself openly.), and said " Well, you go home and tell them about us and Matha. You be our memory. And you love those boys every single day like it was the only one you have." And then she got up, tucking her hanky back into her purse,  walked to her truck and left without a backward glance.

Before we left, I asked the Librarian if she knew if the Dalton family was descended from the Dalton Gang, a notorious gang of robbers from the years after the Civil War. She said " Well, we don't talk about that much around here. It's a part of our history we ain't too proud of. " and left it at that.

So I have one more salute...to Matha Dalton and all of the young men and women who've given so much  so that the rest of us can hold onto our dreams. Thank you, Matha. And thank you Granny Dalton, for taking the time to tell us about your life.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!