Tales From the Burning Prairie

There is a dark, primal place in everyone. It is a place where we store our animal instincts, our violent impulses, and our reservoirs of strength. This place remains largely hidden behind social conventions and buried under the bland pleasantries of everyday life. But when we need to tap into that place it is there. And sometimes, when we aren’t prepared for it, that dark space comes roaring to the surface.

I was caught unawares today.

When you live in Oklahoma it’s just smart to keep a weather eye open all the time. And I’m not just talking about being aware of one’s surroundings. No, I mean actually paying attention to the weather. Listen to the radio, check online, watch the news. And that’s just what I was doing, watching the news. But not really paying too much heed until the weather forecast started. Until an unfortunately familiar story caught at the edges of my consciousness.

A tragedy struck, in a tiny town south of here, the day after my birthday. Two young girls, walking a well-traveled and familiar route, were shot and killed with no apparent motive. There is something on the news almost nightly, as no suspect has yet been identified. I paid attention long enough to find that the situation had not changed, then went back to my book or computer or whatever else I was doing. Pumpkin was sitting on the back of the couch, brushing my hair. I was further distracted by the almost rhythmic beat of brush bristles on my scalp.

Today they released the taped 911 call one of the girls’ grandmother made when she found them. Law enforcement is hoping to flush out more leads with this release. It was horrific. I read along with the transcript as I listened, now fully alert. She cried and screamed, the last thing on the tape was, “My babies!” It was a howl of grief and rage torn from that primal space at the very pit of the soul.

Then the strangest thing happened. A second howl rose to match the one on the tape, echoing in the room. I realized that the howl was mine just as great barking sobs were torn from my chest, filling my mouth. The wordless anger and sorrow escaping my mouth in howls, barks, and roars would have been familiar to my earliest ancestresses, the ones barely more than dumb animals, the cave-painters, the gatherers.

At that moment, I was the mother wolf howling, in sympathetic outrage, with her pack; I was the mother bear roaring to protect her cubs. And then I felt one of my own little cubs, still tap-tap-tapping on my head with her brush. I leaned into her and she hugged my head; and I heard my other, bigger cub playing noisily in his room. Through the left-over tears, I told her I loved her and received one big, gooey, suction-y kiss.

I know this, if there is any mother out there shielding this crime, who is not moved to action by that grandmother’s howl, then she is not of my pack.

Not too many years back, the governor issued burn ban after burn ban because of the wildfires ripping through our state. I live in midtown, but some of the fires got close enough to town for us to smell them in our backyard. The very air left the taste of charcoal at the back of my throat. Years of drought had turned the prairie into a tinderbox. Ranchers were suffering, but many generous folks from out of state donated hay so their animals could eat.

At the same time the prairie was burning, I began writing again. Thus the name of my blog. One of my closest-held dreams when I was young was to be a writer. But life intervened and I never got around to making that dream come true. Years later, when I was sure that I had expended all my creativity to create two beautiful children, I found my voice again. In blogging.

How I wish that I had know about this during that first horrid, post-partum-depression-wracked year after my son was born. (Or that blogging had even existed during the five years I battle infertility.) But I remained ensconced in my milky isolation, never even guessing how many mothers were out there, mothers who felt just like I did.

Now, after the fires and during the deluge, here am I, writing free. Free of those who actively discouraged me from writing for a living, free of those who simply did not care to stand in my corner, free of concern for how others (even family) see me.

The earth is lush and green and soggy with ideas. The temperatures are kind and the air scrubbed clean by the constant rain. Now all I need is summer’s bright promise to see what will bloom.

Cottonwood is an abomination. I know some of you out there may disagree with me about this devil-tree, but what are you nuts!?! I stepped out the door today and for the first time in a week I didn’t feel like an extra in Legend. This time of year I start sneezing when I look out the window and see the cottonwood fuzz drifting through the yard. Some of those fuzzies destined to become new devil-trees, some weakly clinging at the edges of lawns and curbs, but most seem to be sent directly towards me to make my eyes water, my nose itch, and my sinuses swell up like over-filled water balloons.

Since the age of nine, I have been plagued by allergies-seasonal and year-round, indoor and outdoor, air-borne and contact. But springtime and autumn have typically brought the most agony per day for me. In one of my many half-hearted attempts at diary-keeping I wrote “Sick with allergies” day after day after day. Finally, I stopped writing about being sick and wrote when I finally felt better.

Many people think hay fever doesn’t actually involve fever, but frequently in my case it did. This is not without precedence–allergic reactions are the body’s immune response to harmless substances. It is a hyper-response considering the generally benign nature of the allergens in question. But is it the exact same immune system that also responds to pathogens, so the symptoms can mimic those of viral infections. Including a febrile response.

Anyway, I quickly developed severe symptoms–sneezing, sinus swelling, congestion, asthma, hives, swollen and watery eyes. I adjusted my life around my allergies. Sequestering myself inside an air-conditioned house or car, avoiding strange animals, carrying an inhaler at all times, trying every new allergy prescription that came out. And often, it wasn’t enough. Every spring seemed to train its full arsenal on me, I was starting to take it personal.

As I got older things calmed down. Instead of the full gauntlet, I’d get hit with one or two foul symptoms per season. Then something beautiful happened to me-I got pregnant! The natural immuno-suppressant effects of pregnancy (the ones that keep your body from treating the fetus as a pathogen) kicked in and totally kept my body from over-reacting to pollen! Oh, and the baby was pretty cool, too. Two and a half years later came baby number two. All the while I was still convinced that I finally had a permanent reprieve from all my many allergies. But. Isn’t there always a but?

But, my “reprieve” after the babies were born had very little to do with finally out-growing my allergies and everything to do with climate control. Air-conditioned house to air-conditioned car to air-conditioned store and back again. All for the sake of keeping babies comfortable and safe. Silly me. I found out the folly of my assumptions when I started walking Monkey to school last fall.

Tulsa is one of the absolute worst places for allergy-sufferers but I have lived other places and haven’t found a significant difference. If the pollen doesn’t get to me, the air pollution will. And this year must be a terrible year, because all of a sudden Hubby is having a time of it.

When I was growing up my mother had terrible hay fever and Dad was convinced it was all in her head. Then as she got older, her symptoms become a lot less severe, but guess who’s got worse? Yep, Dad’s. Now that I’m older and have been dealing with this for so long, my symptoms are considerably better, but guess who’s have gotten worse? Yep, Hubby’s.

Not to say that Hubby wasn’t sympathetic or anything. I just don’t think he had a real understanding of this seasonal misery, unfortunately the poor guy does now. Bless his heart.

Oh, by the way, if any of you are planting any trees this year, for the love of everything holy DO NOT PLANT THE DEVIL’S OWN TREE!!!!! Please. Cottonwood sucks.

It so happened that I was outside with Pumpkin the other day when we heard the tornado sirens go off, startling me momentarily even though I should be used to it by now. As you may know, we live in Tornado Alley and our city has a reliable tornado-siren network. That siren network is tested at high noon every Wednesday, all year long. Whenever I hear that sound I always look to the sky and my mind goes into overdrive, thinking about escape and shelter.

This attitude is drummed into us Okies from our youngest days. My children are already being taught what to do and where to go in a bad storm; it will become as natural to them as it is to me. Poor things have already been stuffed into closets several times, and once under a table in a storeroom at Hubby’s office building. From my earliest days, I recall being woken in the middle of the night and ushered away from windows, knowing that Daddy had kept vigil all night watching Don Woods on KTUL. Then there were the many tornado drills at school, “Duck and Cover” may not help much in a nuclear (btw, I know how to pronounce that) attack, but it’s pretty sound advice for tornadoes. We would huddle on the hall floor in front of the lockers and cover the backs of our necks with our hands.

I love our capricious weather, it’s savage and beautiful. But you have to be vigilant, the thunderstorm that lulls you to sleep can turn in an instant and dump you from your bed. I have seen the whirlwind with my naked eyes, and driven through the devastation after it’s gone. Spring is our most dangerous time but lest we get too complacent, occasionally Mother Nature shakes things up a bit. Tornadoes have touched our state as early as February and as late as November.

One siren triggering the next across the city, they start low and gradually get louder. Soon all the dogs join in, some howling, some barking. The tornado alert is high and steady, and I have heard it too often. This year, a year of high rainfall amounts, after several years of drought and prairie fires, those same sirens sounded a call I had rarely, if ever, heard. The flood alert, which is quite a different sound, goes up and down between two tones, like police cars in Paris.

Either sound is enough to send a chill of fear down the spine, and make me hug my babies tight. Even at high noon on a clear, blue, school day.

Tiny houses are everywhere, you just have to know where to look. Driving one of my favorite country back roads to Claremore today, I saw two of them. One was neat and tidy, blue with white trim-a perfect house in miniature. The other could have been a well-house, it was near the property line and looked like a weathered clapboard shack. These aren’t just small, adult-scale homes, nobody over 4 feet tall could hope to even go inside.

You can buy playhouses that look just like real houses if only real houses were that impossibly charming. You might think of these as a recent inventions, but I know of one that is older than my mother. It stood silent sentinel on the road between Miami, Ok and Grand Lake O’ The Cherokees as long as she could remember. Every time we’d drive through Fairland, she or my Gammie would tell the story of the local doctor who had the architectural marvel built for his beloved daughter. I remember nothing of the story past this point. Was I ever told what became of the beloved daughter? Did she die tragically young? Did she break her father’s heart by eloping with the wrong suitor? Or did she live a full, long life complete with children and grandchildren to play in her father’s gift. Perhaps I will never find out what became of the girl, I don’t even know if her lovely playhouse still stands that silent sentinel. Maybe that beautiful gesture has fallen prey to the developer’s urge, I hope not. But every time I see a tiny house I am reminded of that father’s sweet gift to his daughter’s fleeting childhood.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could take a little bit of that magic into adulthood? The magic that turns a simple playhouse into a fortress or a fairy castle would come in handy when faced with the routine tasks of the everyday. An elfin-sized house would be easy to care for, even if rather cramped. But instead of pining for my long-ended childhood, I just hope to cherish every moment of my son’s and daughter’s childhoods. While the years may pass in a drowsy haze of eternal school years and endless summers for them, they will fly by in that proverbial blink of an eye for me. And before I know it, my babies will be grown and gone with babies of their own. Even if I never build a wee, magic house for them, I hope they look back and remember their childhoods as beautiful and filled with love.

Horses hold a unique place in human culture. They may be domesticated but there is nothing servile in them. War horse, Trojan horse, horse of a different color, nightmare, buck the system, Mustangs, ponytail, stallion. Our language would be less colorful without them. We love them, we fear them, we bet money on them. Horses have carried not just people, but hopes and dreams. The settling of the West would not have been possible without them. Unlike pets, horses are truly partners with Man. I was four the first time I rode horseback. Wasn’t much of a ride, just clinging to her mane while some male relative-uncle, father, grandfather, I don’t remember-lead her around the yard. It was glorious.

I rode several horses after that first equine experience, but I was simply a witness to my most powerful and surreal encounter with them.

It was a few years after we moved to Claremore, I was 11, maybe 12. We were waiting for the bus on an early Spring day. I hated that bus, but for just one day I was glad that I was there.

Anyone who has ever lived in Oklahoma in the Spring knows how interesting the weather can get. That day, Mother Nature gifted us with the thickest fog I have ever seen. The stop sign feet from where we stood looked ghostly, and the houses just yards away were completely invisible. It was already an unnerving situation and we were unnaturally quiet.

In our own quiet, we began to hear a strange sound. The fog thickened and distorted all sound, including the one approaching us. Hearing what sounded somewhat like a train, we looked up. In Oklahoma, in the Spring, when you hear a freight train and there is no train, you are about to die. Or to come so close to death as to touch its hem. Even though there were no storm clouds in the sky, only that thick fog enshrouding us, we still eyed the ditch. It was a deep ditch.

The sound grew louder and closer, and then the ground itself began to tremble. Had we been California kids instead of Oklahomans, we probably would have thought it was an earthquake. What happened next seemed improbable and had I been alone I would’ve doubted my senses.

The fog parted like a curtain and a herd of horses burst through. Maybe a dozen of them passed so close to us, I could smell horse sweat and hear them snort with the effort. They jumped the ditch and disappeared across the road. As the hoof beats faded into the distance, we heard something new-voices calling and whistling. The horses were being chased by cowboys! Real cowboys! As they chased the horses across the road, they took no notice of us.

I have always wondered if, in the fog, we were somehow seeing something out of the past. It seemed so strange, so unreal, yet it was real. It really happened. Not a single one of us talked about it when the bus finally arrived and we had to go back into the present. The experience was too fragile and exquisite to talk about. To speak of the horses in the same way we might talk about teachers or other kids or what we did on Saturday would have been incredibly profane. I didn’t speak a word all the way to school and the rest of the kids that saw them were strangely silent as well.

Of course, life went back to normal but I will never be the same. The horses gave me an incalculable gift that day, one which I can’t even describe in words. Sometimes I wish I could touch somebody in the middle of the forehead and show them what I saw, impart the beauty I received. Alas, this gift remains mine and mine alone and I will never forget them, the horses out of time.