Friend Power

When I turned 77 I figured I would die soon. Seventy-six had been a trying year with three wrist surgeries and a bad fall. I was feeling vulnerable. Moreover, my mother died when she was 78.

Subsequently, I suffered a loss of confidence. Then I fell into a funk, a deep one.

Finally, months later, I’m getting my mojo back and it’s all due to friend power.

Kathy and I, who have a long history, used to get together regularly to sew or do other creative work. Then, the sewing stopped when I had wrist surgeries. Instead, Kathy came to be my caregiver in the first few days following each operation.

Kathy came back today to sew. I had made a great effort to get the sewing room, now sewing room/desk area ready. Still, my art table was literally covered with long-delayed, uncompleted projects, some of them works in progress and some there for repairs.

Somehow, with Kathy working near me, my spirits lifted, my mind and hands found their competence and I finished all the repairs.

The old driftwood sculpture of a shore bird that I made many years ago in Biloxi  had been leaning far forward, its legs cracked just above the feet. Now it stands upright again.

The Dennis mask I made years ago had fallen from the wall, its horns broken off and damaged. Now it’s back on its wall spot, repaired and ready to cause more mischief.

I also repaired a broken marble etching that Lucy gave me many years ago and the broken natural tendril on this miniature gourd that I beaded years ago.

I'm back in the groove. My confidence has returned. I'm not waiting to die. I attribute it to Kathy’s presence and her unconditional love. This is the power of friendship.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer

How I Became A Country Woman

I wasn’t one to keep in touch with childhood and high school friends, but I’ve often thought of them and wondered where time has taken them.  Then, yesterday, I received a Facebook friend request from my childhood friend Yvonne.

Immediately I was flooded with memories of happy days and nights I spent at her family’s farm, where she and her three siblings lived with their parents and maternal grandmother.

The house was a traditional foursquare. It was heated by a huge wood-burning cook stove and, on special occasions, by another wood stove in the living room. Water came from a hand pump over a sink in the kitchen. The toilet was a privy behind the house. We ate supper by the light of kerosene lamps and carried a lamp upstairs when we went to bed.

I remember picking huckleberries at the woods's edge in summer and bathing in a big washtub on the back porch. I remember searching for eggs laid by their free-ranging chickens. I remember going to bed in the winter weighed down by several quilts and waking to windows heavy with frost from our breath. I remember the day Yvonne reached into the bin of chicken feed and was bitten on her finger by a mouse.

I loved everything about visiting Yvonne and never declined an invitation to spend the night. My dad was a farmer, too, but his farmhouse burned to the ground before he and my mother were married, so we lived in a bungalow in the nearby village. Although I went to our farm and played there, my only real experience of farm life was when I visited Yvonne.

Every detail of Yvonne's house is imprinted in my mind. Whenever I read a novel set in the country, that is the house I picture.

Today it dawned on me how my friendship with Yvonne evolved into my life dream of living in the country. Of course I don’t live as Yvonne and her family lived. I have every modern convenience I desire, but I also have a garden and chickens. I listen to the coyotes yipping at the full moon. Deer and wild turkeys frequent my front yard. I pick wild gooseberries and raspberries. I also have two kerosene lamps. They come in handy when the electricity fails.

One never knows how important friendships will be. I’m thankful Yvonne was, and is, my friend. Yes, of course, I accepted her invitation to be a Facebook friend.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer

We Get By with A Lot of Help from Our Friends

When my left hand fell apart in July I was in big trouble. I couldn't cook or bathe myself. Dennis, God bless him, stood by me and kept me going. When it was time for his annual trout fishing trip, he took me to Colorado Springs, where our daughter Nancy and granddaughter Cleo gave me loving care.

Back home I still had more than two weeks before surgery and it was time for Dennis to return to work at the university. No family members were available to help, but friends showed up with food, with encouragement and with loving concern. I cried often, grieving for my lost capability, but also in thankfulness for the kindness of others to me.

Dennis was home with me for my surgery and three days after. Then Kathy arrived. When Kathy and I are out together people often assume she is my younger sister, and truly she has been a sister to me for more than forty years. This time she showed up with bags and boxes and a cooler full of food and a suitcase. She cooked, helped me bathe, consoled, took me to the doctor and kept the house running. She even watered the gardens. Here she had just placed a sprinkler in the arid strawberry bed.

She stayed five days and then came back the next week for three more. A more generous person never lived and I am forever in her debt.

Others who stepped up to help include Kathy T. and Bill, Cheryl, Pia and Uli, Laurie and Greg, Linda, Joanie, and Tracy, who refers to herself as my "personal assistant." Sincere thanks to all of you who have helped me through passage back to health and functionality. You have helped both at home and by ferrying me to and from physical therapy, the grocery store and other errands. (I can't drive with just one hand.) What's more, Leslie, Barbara and repeat helpers are waiting in the wings to be called on; for the safety net you provide I'm also grateful.

In addition, friends have sent cards, flowers, e-mails and Facebook comments, all of them supportive and encouraging. This, too, provides a source of strength in my recovery.

Through it all, Dennis has been my mainstay.

With all this help I've gone from being a woman who didn't care whether she woke up after surgery to being a woman who is free of pain and who expects to lead a productive life.

The Golden Rule comes to mind: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." If we know someone who is in a tough situation, let's give them a helping hand. Care-giving is an affirmation of interconnectedness and love. Someday, sooner or later, every one of us will be in need of care. True friends will do whatever they can to ease the burden, make us feel that we are not alone and give us hope. Trite but true, a friend in need is a friend indeed. I never fully understood that saying before.