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Once again the ranch house
opened its arms to us as we drove up the long drive toward it. The smell
of sweet clover and prairie grass was healing to me as medicine. The old
meadowlark trilled her minor keys warning us for encroaching upon her
world but even that was pleasant. Clouds came across the prairie sky like
locomotives racing to some distant destination. The expanse and beauty of
the landscape always, for all my life, left me feeling humble and aware of
a Higher Power.
“If you don't believe in
God it's because you haven't been out in his world to visit with him.” Dad
always remarked. There was the richness of combined conditions: Warm
gentle breezes on a day like the day now, fragrances of wild flowers, and
all above all the eternal, uninterrupted, almost holy, silence. Many a
cowboy working to save a cow and her calf in a driving rainstorm with
lightning close on his heels might give another reason for being aware of
a Supreme Being.
My cousin, now the owner,
and my uncle, wanted Rodney and me at the old home place. I can see now as
it is in disrepair and falling down, the reason for this. We would have a
choice to make soon but, for the moment, these grounds gave me security
and respite from a hateful world I never knew existed.
Rhonda, our baby, had a
room ready and waiting for her. There was an old fashioned, cast-off
wicker basket of an earlier vintage to precede the stroller. It was on
very large old wheels hidden away in the now, empty granaries. The buggy
was the kind seen in old movies, when nurses were pushing babies about in
Central Park.
http://www.antiquemystique.com/pages/5002_jpg.htm
After it was scrubbed with
disinfectant, spray painted a pale yellow and lined with soft green, satin
I had quilted it made a perfect bassinet. A long ruffle dropping off the
sides hid the oversized wheels. Simply releasing the brakes allowed the
newly created crib to be easily moved from place to place in the
overlarge, rooms of the house, and this was a plus.
My cousin, Ura May's, old
room had been painted a muted, soft, earthy blue and this is where I put
the bassinet. A found desk in a junk shop was painted the same pale
yellow. The flat top of the desk gave me a place for changing diapers.
Windows of any of the rooms were never covered with fabric. Only slatted
Venetian blinds were used and this allowed the outdoors to come into the
house during the day. After all these years, all the furniture has been
destroyed or stolen from the ranch house except that one yellow desk.
If I had visited a world
filled with possibly, unsolvable problems, Rhonda, Rodney and I were back
into our environment where nothing like that existed. Here were peace,
love, and all things beautiful. Soon the events and damage done to my
daughter I felt would only be forgotten memories. Of course, this never
happened and in reality was just the beginning of our trek of close to
fifty years of making major decisions regarding, not only our lives, but
our children's world as well.
We walked away from that
beautiful home to unknown places just as our Dad had done so many years
ago. Why did we? It was because the blood of the Joneses goes to
pioneering and that spirit to have gone with building this oasis had to
push forward to a new world in desperate need of being pioneered and this
was the sad and pitiful condition of the disabled child in the year of
1959. No longer would the world be able to sandwich them away from curious
eyes in lonely institutions, We would and did see to that. |
