It was the last day of Christmas vacation, so my granddaughters and I decided to go to a nearby fast food restaurant for a a treat. It was midafternoon, not too many folk about. I needed to use the bathroom, and given their current ages, didn't think I needed to take them. When I exited, I heard a small girl crying loudly, the "I hurt" cry, not the "my feelings are hurt" cry. I saw an older woman comforting her. The girl appeared about 3 or 4.
My oldest granddaughter told me, "something bad happened while you were gone." I asked her to tell me and she said she would tell me in the car. I told her if it was bad, and I needed to do something to fix it, I needed to know before we left. Her eyes slid to an older, heavyset man waiting for his order about 10-12 feet away. He wore a pleasant expression and a navy blue shirt. I turned around to look at him, so he probably was aware we were discussing him.
She said the little girl, whose sobs were subsiding, had just been sitting in a chair. "She was just sitting there!" my granddaughter said. "She was sort of singing to herself but she wasn't really making any noise. She wasn't doing anything!"
And the man came up and walloped her, she said. He hit her so hard her head snapped foreward and hit the edge of the table. And then he walked off when she began to cry.
The man continued to wait with a pleasant expression for his order. His wife came up and offered him a sip of her soft drink, which he refused at first but then accepted. The little girl calmed down, but it seemed to me the woman was rather stern with her. Hmm.
My nine-year-old granddaughter looked at me wide-eyed. "He must be the worst daddy in the world!" she told me. "She wasn't doing anything, and he hit her!"
Just then, the man's order was delivered and they all left. The little girl was with the woman. The two were on their way out the door when the man called to the girl. Oh, yeah. She heard him. and whisked out the door ahead of the woman. She was sucking her thumb.
No, it wasn't something I would interfere with. It was borderline. My granddaughters and I finished our snacks and left a short while later. But I thought about what the older girl had said. It reasonates. At nine, she is beginning to find out some people aren't so nice. But at home, she is safe and can trust the people she loves.
"He must be the worst daddy in the world."
Yes, it reasonates.
Showing posts with label safe families. Show all posts
Showing posts with label safe families. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Dad was a Water Witch
My daddy was a water witch.
When you are growing up, and you see your dad walk around with a fork of mesquite wood that occasionally points at the ground, you don't think about it much. It certainly wasn't anything he advertised, or talked about. Every so often, some oldtimer would come around and he and my dad would go off to some property and then come back. Not often, just sometimes. I do know payment never changed hands. I don't know how often he was successful--he never talked about it. And there's not such a much of water to find in our part of New Mexico.
Dad was a respected businessman, later a banker. In New Mexico, it wasn't quite as weird to have a bank president that was also a water witch, but......it was a little different, shall we say.
We owned most of the desert around our house, and there came a time when Dad would go out, of a Sunday afternoon, and slowly walk back and forth across several acres.
He wanted to put in a water well. He was looking for the water. And he found it.
I remember the day he had me step between his arms and put my hands above his on the stick. You know how a hose feels when the water is pouring through it? It felt like that, and the stick was pulling, straining, to turn down to the ground. Then he let go, and suddenly I was just a girl holding a stick.
He ran out of money the first time he drilled and had to come back. Way more than 1,000 feet down, an underground river flowed just where he said it was. And the second time, he hit water. The driller had thought my dad was nuts, but hey, he was paying. Then the wet mud started coming. And finally, the water. The driller may have been more excited than my dad. After all, my dad knew the water was there. He was satisfied. He was very pleased though, with the volume and the potability. For years, he and mother used that water for their morning coffee. You see, in an Air Force town, the city water was highly chlorinated. This made much better coffee.
The well made it possible for him to nurture the large garden, flower beds, vegetable garden, and one memorable year, an acre of alfalfa, at pretty much his own expense. I loved wading through the grass when he flooded the lawn.
Throughout, he was just a perfectly ordinary man who liked to garden and keep bees, and did I mention, was fluent in three languages? In this little two-horse town in southern New Mexico. He was just my dad. Who was a water witch.
When you are growing up, and you see your dad walk around with a fork of mesquite wood that occasionally points at the ground, you don't think about it much. It certainly wasn't anything he advertised, or talked about. Every so often, some oldtimer would come around and he and my dad would go off to some property and then come back. Not often, just sometimes. I do know payment never changed hands. I don't know how often he was successful--he never talked about it. And there's not such a much of water to find in our part of New Mexico.
Dad was a respected businessman, later a banker. In New Mexico, it wasn't quite as weird to have a bank president that was also a water witch, but......it was a little different, shall we say.
We owned most of the desert around our house, and there came a time when Dad would go out, of a Sunday afternoon, and slowly walk back and forth across several acres.
He wanted to put in a water well. He was looking for the water. And he found it.
I remember the day he had me step between his arms and put my hands above his on the stick. You know how a hose feels when the water is pouring through it? It felt like that, and the stick was pulling, straining, to turn down to the ground. Then he let go, and suddenly I was just a girl holding a stick.
He ran out of money the first time he drilled and had to come back. Way more than 1,000 feet down, an underground river flowed just where he said it was. And the second time, he hit water. The driller had thought my dad was nuts, but hey, he was paying. Then the wet mud started coming. And finally, the water. The driller may have been more excited than my dad. After all, my dad knew the water was there. He was satisfied. He was very pleased though, with the volume and the potability. For years, he and mother used that water for their morning coffee. You see, in an Air Force town, the city water was highly chlorinated. This made much better coffee.
The well made it possible for him to nurture the large garden, flower beds, vegetable garden, and one memorable year, an acre of alfalfa, at pretty much his own expense. I loved wading through the grass when he flooded the lawn.
Throughout, he was just a perfectly ordinary man who liked to garden and keep bees, and did I mention, was fluent in three languages? In this little two-horse town in southern New Mexico. He was just my dad. Who was a water witch.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Summertime pre AC, and the Living Was Easy
Hmmmm. Warming up around here. Rain's finally stopping, but the humidity isn't, and the grass is growing almost visibly. Pretty, though. Mornings still cool. Some cooling off in the evenings. It's only days from the first 100-degree day.
I've raised the thermostat on the ac to something I can more possibly afford for the summer. And I think back to childhood again.
We didn't get a swamp cooler (window unit) which works extremely well in the New Mexico low humidity, until I was about eight or nine. A few years after that, we put in central air and heat.
But when I was a young girl, we had no airconditioning at all. What we did have was three big cottonwoods over the house and yard and the occasional breeze. And, of course, the fresh, cooler air in the mornings after the desert had cooled down overnight. Cool curled lazily in the shadows as the sun rose, even in the lacy shade of mesquite. The birds sang incredibly, ending with the "coo-coo, cooo-coo" of mourning doves. Their call is what I remember best about waking in the summer.
Mom and Dad let me sleep later in the summer. It was a treat for me, and I was aware even at the time, a treat for them. Dad ALWAYS woke at 6 a.m--poor guy couldn't sleep later even on vacations--and he would rouse and make the coffee. He would pour his cup, then later my mother's, doctoring it the way she liked with milk and surar, and set it on her bedside table when he woke her. My mother loved this bit of pampering--it was one of her favorite parts of their loving each other. She could then rise and sit, slowly waking up while drinking her perfect cup of coffee. In the summers when she didn't teach, they might go out on the porch to watch the sun rise over the mountains and just visit. They always had plenty to say. Sometimes I would rouse briefly to the rumble of my father's voice and my mother's laughter, then his. And I would subside back to sleep, secure in the music of my home.
And yeah, it really was that good. I was so very lucky.
I would wake while the morning was still cool and the mourning doves were calling, and walk barefoot to the kitchen, where Mom would be doing the morning dishes. A lot of time, breakfast was simply cereal and fruit, but I remember mornings when she had made French toast, coating each finished slice with butter, sugar and cinnamon. Not need for syrup. And bacon, and usually sliced cantalope. Dad planted a lot, so we ate a lot. And figs, and peaches and apricots. We were dirt poor about then, but I didn't know it for years. Kids with full bellies don't.
And I would play. This was necessarily alone, because we lived out from town and the nearest neighbors were at least a half-mile away. Dad had planted Four-O-Clocks along the irrigation ditch, and I had set up my imaginary community there, setting up little cardboard houses and roads, And yes, I had a couple of little die-cast cars. Sometimes the irrigation water would be running and I could wade. And I could climb the trees. One tree was a lot harder to master than the other, but I finally did, and found a fork that gave a perfect view of the hanging nest of Baltimore Orioles about 50 feet away. I spent hours one summer watching them build the nest then raise their chicks. Mother would come outside every few minutes and call me. "Here", I would call, and she would see I was still in the tree, then go back inside. Sometimes she would fix the two of us a Coca Cola over ice and we would sit on the lawn chairs and talk while we drank the special treat.
After I was about 3, I don't ever remember playing with dolls, except the ones with real hair I could comb, and I would make up stories for them to act out, doing all the voices myself, of course. I probably would have loved Barbies.
The kitchen was on the west side of the house. We ate our big meal at noon, so it wasn't unusual for mother to get a jump on meat loaf and vegetables by 10 or 11, to dissipate the kitchen heat before the afternoon sun came in.
One of my favorite meals was her simple summertime supper. We would stop by the butcher's counter and she would get two slices each of all the cold cuts--balogna, salami, olive loaf, chopped ham, liverwurst, that I remember definitely. Then she would get some cucumbers and onions from the garden, peel the cucumbers and slice them in salt water with ice cubes she stuck in the refrigerator a half-hour or so.
Then she dumped the saltwater and mixed apple cider vinegar and sugar in a little more ice water, slicing in the onions, and leaving the whole to marinate till supper.
She would slice garden ripe tomatoes and fix whatever fruit was ripe. We had wholewheat bread and I might make a sandwhich with Miracle Whip, fresh tomato and the meat of my choice, with a big helping, probably seconds, of the cucumbers. No heat. Not one burner on. Smart. And still one of my favorite memories. I think some of that was with the cold cuts, I actually had a choice. I loved it all.
In New Mexico, it is so dry you don't often have sweat rolling very far. It dries first. I was 18 and in Dallas when sweat rolled all the way down my back for the first time, and I thought it was a bug. I didn't "glow." I sweat like a horse that has been steeple chasing. The plus is, that's also when I learned my hair was naturally curly.
Mom would always put me in the tub about 4 p.m., so I would be fresh and clean when my daddy came home. First she had to drag me in, then she had to drag me out. But after having curtailed my fun in the dirt one day, I was enraged to hear my father say, "You need a bath. Just look at you. You're dusty all over." Well, I informed him, I had so had my bath and this was (sadly, I realized) the color of my suntan--dust brown. He apologized.
Later I never could stand to lie in the sun over 10 minutes or so to suntan, so I never tried the baby oil and iodine of my childhood. I was stuck with a smooth, but dust brown tan.
Meantime, I remember the years without air conditioning, but without the misery they were in so many other climates. Most nights it cooled off enough to open the windows and pull a sheet, or even the bedspread over. And cold fresh vegetables and fruits out of the garden were a great way to beat the heat.
I've raised the thermostat on the ac to something I can more possibly afford for the summer. And I think back to childhood again.
We didn't get a swamp cooler (window unit) which works extremely well in the New Mexico low humidity, until I was about eight or nine. A few years after that, we put in central air and heat.
But when I was a young girl, we had no airconditioning at all. What we did have was three big cottonwoods over the house and yard and the occasional breeze. And, of course, the fresh, cooler air in the mornings after the desert had cooled down overnight. Cool curled lazily in the shadows as the sun rose, even in the lacy shade of mesquite. The birds sang incredibly, ending with the "coo-coo, cooo-coo" of mourning doves. Their call is what I remember best about waking in the summer.
Mom and Dad let me sleep later in the summer. It was a treat for me, and I was aware even at the time, a treat for them. Dad ALWAYS woke at 6 a.m--poor guy couldn't sleep later even on vacations--and he would rouse and make the coffee. He would pour his cup, then later my mother's, doctoring it the way she liked with milk and surar, and set it on her bedside table when he woke her. My mother loved this bit of pampering--it was one of her favorite parts of their loving each other. She could then rise and sit, slowly waking up while drinking her perfect cup of coffee. In the summers when she didn't teach, they might go out on the porch to watch the sun rise over the mountains and just visit. They always had plenty to say. Sometimes I would rouse briefly to the rumble of my father's voice and my mother's laughter, then his. And I would subside back to sleep, secure in the music of my home.
And yeah, it really was that good. I was so very lucky.
I would wake while the morning was still cool and the mourning doves were calling, and walk barefoot to the kitchen, where Mom would be doing the morning dishes. A lot of time, breakfast was simply cereal and fruit, but I remember mornings when she had made French toast, coating each finished slice with butter, sugar and cinnamon. Not need for syrup. And bacon, and usually sliced cantalope. Dad planted a lot, so we ate a lot. And figs, and peaches and apricots. We were dirt poor about then, but I didn't know it for years. Kids with full bellies don't.
And I would play. This was necessarily alone, because we lived out from town and the nearest neighbors were at least a half-mile away. Dad had planted Four-O-Clocks along the irrigation ditch, and I had set up my imaginary community there, setting up little cardboard houses and roads, And yes, I had a couple of little die-cast cars. Sometimes the irrigation water would be running and I could wade. And I could climb the trees. One tree was a lot harder to master than the other, but I finally did, and found a fork that gave a perfect view of the hanging nest of Baltimore Orioles about 50 feet away. I spent hours one summer watching them build the nest then raise their chicks. Mother would come outside every few minutes and call me. "Here", I would call, and she would see I was still in the tree, then go back inside. Sometimes she would fix the two of us a Coca Cola over ice and we would sit on the lawn chairs and talk while we drank the special treat.
After I was about 3, I don't ever remember playing with dolls, except the ones with real hair I could comb, and I would make up stories for them to act out, doing all the voices myself, of course. I probably would have loved Barbies.
The kitchen was on the west side of the house. We ate our big meal at noon, so it wasn't unusual for mother to get a jump on meat loaf and vegetables by 10 or 11, to dissipate the kitchen heat before the afternoon sun came in.
One of my favorite meals was her simple summertime supper. We would stop by the butcher's counter and she would get two slices each of all the cold cuts--balogna, salami, olive loaf, chopped ham, liverwurst, that I remember definitely. Then she would get some cucumbers and onions from the garden, peel the cucumbers and slice them in salt water with ice cubes she stuck in the refrigerator a half-hour or so.
Then she dumped the saltwater and mixed apple cider vinegar and sugar in a little more ice water, slicing in the onions, and leaving the whole to marinate till supper.
She would slice garden ripe tomatoes and fix whatever fruit was ripe. We had wholewheat bread and I might make a sandwhich with Miracle Whip, fresh tomato and the meat of my choice, with a big helping, probably seconds, of the cucumbers. No heat. Not one burner on. Smart. And still one of my favorite memories. I think some of that was with the cold cuts, I actually had a choice. I loved it all.
In New Mexico, it is so dry you don't often have sweat rolling very far. It dries first. I was 18 and in Dallas when sweat rolled all the way down my back for the first time, and I thought it was a bug. I didn't "glow." I sweat like a horse that has been steeple chasing. The plus is, that's also when I learned my hair was naturally curly.
Mom would always put me in the tub about 4 p.m., so I would be fresh and clean when my daddy came home. First she had to drag me in, then she had to drag me out. But after having curtailed my fun in the dirt one day, I was enraged to hear my father say, "You need a bath. Just look at you. You're dusty all over." Well, I informed him, I had so had my bath and this was (sadly, I realized) the color of my suntan--dust brown. He apologized.
Later I never could stand to lie in the sun over 10 minutes or so to suntan, so I never tried the baby oil and iodine of my childhood. I was stuck with a smooth, but dust brown tan.
Meantime, I remember the years without air conditioning, but without the misery they were in so many other climates. Most nights it cooled off enough to open the windows and pull a sheet, or even the bedspread over. And cold fresh vegetables and fruits out of the garden were a great way to beat the heat.
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