Boats and cheap cookies

I started out in Texas over 52 years ago, but somehow ended up in a mountain community known as Eureka Springs with a group of my 40 closest pals. Far too dependent on actual money needed to pay rent and buy frivolous items like gas, milk and bread, we could hardly be called a commune. We just weren't that hip. We were browsing, trying on 'hip' for size - looking for that perfect amount which would insure our cutting- edge posture in that tiny art community, but still allow us to drop in at the local Burger King without censure. During that time, I hand- lettered frilly victorian signs, waited tables, washed dishes and herded tourists through caves -all in the most polite possible fashion. After all - I was raised in Texas, where deference to one's elders was everything.

My friends and I weren't hard core about anything in those days, and in some ways that probably saved us from being insufferable. The real ' back to the land' crowd sort of turned their thin, pinched noses up at us. We still ate processed foods and smoked commercial cigarettes; this proved our unworthiness to sit in front of their late night campfires and get high.

We were, however, enthusiastic campers, hikers and canoe devotees in our own right. Weekends we paddled downstream in our home made tie dyed shirts, wolfing cookies and singing...the sound of which floated up and over the high banks of the Kings, to the astonishment of whatever cows were grazing near the river.
When we got tired of eating cheap cookies, we invented a game. If you could hit the next canoe with a Chips Ahoy -10 points. If you could actually wing somebody in the next canoe [ in swift water this was a fast moving target, remember] you got 25 points. Even more points for the one who could take a big cookie crumb and hit the mark, due to the decreased size of the missile. And of course, if you could make the intended target yell "OWW" this was good for bonus points.

But that was a lifetime ago.

I guess I'm still a paradox of myself - still not hard core enough one way or the other, according to who you ask. Now that I'm middle aged, I still love windchimes and the rich smell of linseed oil that creeps into the crannies of this house when a new painting sits curing in some corner. But I also keep my checkbook balanced and have at least a notion of which new bill is being discussed on the senate floor.
I credit my late husband with many things -the most important of which was providing me with a gentle, day by day education in seeing the Big Picture.
A fellow Texan, a chemistry/ math major plus a doctorate in art history, he'd come home from Viet Nam half blinded. After a horrendous recovery stint at Walter Reed, he spent the remaining months of his tour as a staffer at the Pentagon, interpreting daily field reports. Later the next year he entered painting conservation training at the Smithsonian, and finally ended up as a conservator at the National Portrait Gallery. By the time we met in 1979, he had opened up a clinic for refugees on the Nicaraguan border.
Bill was the first person I ever knew who was a bigger than life sort of man. A military spy, sculptor, scientist and missionary, I felt a little overwhelmed by his accomplishments at first, then later learned to embrace them. After all, they were at the core of who he was and who he would unwittingly teach me to be in the future. Without knowing it, he taught me that the strongest life force can be found in the small things one loves and involves themselves in every day. That the more people really know, the less consumed they are with setting other people straight. That it's really okay to be nobody in particular, even in your own head. Maybe even providing one with a certain edge, when things get down to the wire. There's no ego pruning to do, no mental underbrush to clear away when things get tough.

I stand back and look at myself every few years, though and feel amazed- a bit embarrassed, even. I'm not the same person I was twenty years ago, and finally have the sense to prepare for how different I'll be in five years. Different, but more the same than ever -just more rounded out in my ability to see the big picture- like swapping a macro-lens for a fish eye. My perception of things may be a bit too round, but at least all the details are there, ready for interpretation.

I learned so much from him, things I never knew I would need 'til now. These are uncertain times, and some days I feel I'm paddling alone. The wind is rising and as usual, an empty cookie bag is blowing around in the bottom of the boat .