Life on Chicken Creek

All indicators point to fall. Some trees are voluntarily dropping their leaves. My tomato vines are a sickly green with a few green and a few overripe tomatoes.  My mum’s are in full bloom. The hummingbirds are busy fueling up for their long trip south.  I love this time of year. Some warm days, with cooler evenings.  I feel a bit more distance from the trauma of this past spring.  It’s not better, not healed, but just a passage of time.  I hope others are finding happy distractions from the grief they carry every day.  I hope you find more smiles than tears. But enjoy the tears too, it’s just a reminder of the intense love that you still have. 

With the loss of my spouse 5 months ago, I quickly discovered that if I wanted to stay on this “half-block small town homestead”, I was going to have to be brave and learn new skills. In the first 30 days I had to learn to run our zero turn radius mower, and the chainsaw. Watching you tube videos helped tremendously. I’ve made through most of the summer without traumatic injury, albeit the mower required repair from my apparent over aggressive techniques. I had numerous toe curling near misses, and weedeating had been one of my least liked chores, so the half block isn’t very picturesque. My garden was merely 3 small raised beds, two of badly neglected tomatoes and one of similarly neglected strawberries  🍓.  Grieving took far more energy than I could have imagined. I am still trying to find the energy to get things started and completed. I hope I figure it out soon. 

The very early mornings are for cats.  Well…and dogs. The very early mornings are for cats and dogs.  I find myself rising way before dawn to set out Gertie, our 11 year old dachshund mix. As a senior citizen, not unlike myself, an early morning tinkle and drink are mandatory.  This morning’s tinkle involved a trip out into the bitter artic air that is scraping across the prairie.  One the stab of cold air strikes, I am awake. Very awake.

So, once all our necessary chores are complete, I sit in my recliner to unload my very awake brain, but as I mentioned, very early mornings are for cats.  Romare, our grey and white tabby, invites himself to take up residence on my chest. It makes writing very difficult, but after a few moments, I pause and let his warm presence and enveloping purr overtake me. I sit my writing aside.  He demands my attention and my affections by thrusting his pointed little chin into my hand and demanding the little scritches that he loves.

   I’m not sure what cats think about. As Romare lays across my chest, I’m sure it’s things like, “ooo that feels nice” or ” Why is she always picking up that little black thing that lights up, instead of holding me?  So annoying!  I’m out of here!”

I wonder if he is aware of cats who struggle to find food and shelter.  I wonder if he is aware of cats who are  abandoned by those who promised to care for them, but failed in their commitment and dumped them along the road, or in a cardboard box and turned a blind eye, a deaf ear as  as they were left alone to survive or not. Had my husband and I not opened our door and welcomed him into our home, haring  our abundance, buying  him food, giving him a warm place to sleep where would he be, what life woukd he be living?

We made room not only in our home but in our hearts.  His affection towards us sometimes looked a bit foreign to us  with its aggressive demands for chin scratches and playful scratches that ended up with bloodied hands that we quickly forgave. He became family.  He flops in our path and is a bit rude at times, but we opened our door to him and our life, his life has been improved.

We have enough. Why would we not share?  Do I have less if I share?  Is my life less if I allow others in?

My thoughts then  bleed into thinking about not cats but people. There was enough for my great-grandparents to find a space when they immigrated here in the late 1880s from Germany.  Just 3 generations ago, Barbara was escaping poverty, and her passage was paid for the family that she was indentured to, to  feed, clean and raise their children, while only a child herself.  John, a teenager who avoided conscription by sailing away to the United States on a ship, and then to  Kansas by train. Completely alone. He was employed first, as a laborer working in construction of the Cudahay plant in Wichita. There, he met the beautiful  Barbara in early 1890. Their shared language and culture, brought them together.   They wed, built a family, purchased acreage in nearby Kingman, and started farming.

Growing wheat, primarily. They raised  cattle, built barns, and built a life with their own hands, taking nothing away from their neighbors.  They became part of the fabric of Kingman County, and for 3 generations, we continue to grow and prosper.  All because someone opened the door, invited them in, and shared. Giving them a chance to escape. 

I hate to think anyone thinks that closing the doors and refusing to share with those looking to improve their life takes away from anyone else. 

I hope we have more compassion for humans than we have for cats.

I heard an obituary read on a Tik Tok video the other day.  Instead of the flowery, saccharine obituary, that you typically read…The children of the decedent, knowing their Mother so well, instead, listed the things that best described their Mom.  The simple day to day things that made this rather ordinary woman, not into a saint…but an affirmation of who she was and what she did…the daily things, the un-extraordinary things.  I began to think about what things I do, that stand out and make up the essence of Tammy:
I love Diet Mountain Dew and Dr. Dr Pepper and hide the bottles from my husband.  I have an extraordinary sweet tooth and belive Little Debbie is a goddess..I leave every single kitchen cabinet door open when I’m cooking. I make yummy pies, especially peach and coconut cream. I make cinnamon rolls and homemade noodles. I cuss like a sailor. I know the Greek alphabet and the members of most 1970’s classic rock groups.  I adore The Beatles, U2, 90’s grunge bands and the Foo Fighters.  I will fight you about my top 10 guitarists.  I keep a messy car, and lose things constantly.  I love my husband my stepson and my Grandchildren. I sometimes forget they are not my own flesh.  I will spend every dollar I have on my husband or grandkids.  I love my animals, and honestly they are my favorite part of day to day life. My weenie dog Marlin is my best buddy.  I mumble a lot. I laugh at my own jokes because I think I’m pretty damn funny. My job broke my heart but healed my childhood trauma.  Saving lives saved my own.  I have a grateful heart for my family,  especially my siblings and my parents.( Despite the emotional space between us, I loved and admired each one.  I lived big and loud and was too much for some, but I was my genuine self, with every flaw and flair.

We should each write our own “obituary” to discover our own essence.  What would you write?

9/4/2024

It’s been a very long time since I have written. Life has changed little. The days each differ, some happy and some sad. Our Beanie dog died after a long bout of cancer a year ago last March. Gertie is now 10 and Marlin and Atlas both recently celebrated their 15th birthdays. Tomorrow I celebrate my 62nd birthday. We are a house of senior citizens, living in our trailer.

Fun is a comfy sit in our recliner, the Hubs and I. A shared evening off of work and a snuggle with one of our fuzzy senior citizens. All the aches and pains are sweetened with lovely memories and a bittersweet homesickness for a place in time, surrounded by the family and friends who are no longer physically present.

Marlin and Atlas are going through difficult health issues that occasionally make us pause to think about the inevitable time when they will leave us too. Marlin has one eye that has gone hazy with cataracts and the other has gone blind from an infection. Atlas has shrunken and grown thin from illness and age. He is still vocal and affectionate and when he gets cold he will permit me to hold him.

Being old isn’t for the weak. It’s heartbreaking at times, comical at times, but it is life. We still love, we still make new make new memories, we live.

Where I live in East Central Kansas we’re in a pattern of rainy weather that’s resulted in river flooding during the past few weeks. We’ve also had two events so far, in the last 10 days, where rain has fallen at such a tremendous rate that is resulted in massive flash flooding. Chicken Creek did not go unaffected. Our little creek swells to 3 or 4 times its size then over the next few hours returns (flash flooding). As the nearby reservoirs and rivers take on these massive amounts of water, the river flooding expands swallowing up the highway that comes in and out of Leroy, farms and homes. We are inconvenienced to take long detours where we look at fields, once holding crops, now looking like vast lakes.

Hubby and I are doing extraordinarily well Chicken Creek has returned to its banks we’ve lost no property other than the inches of muddy banks of our creek that have washed downstream. We are safe, the animals are safe, the chicken pen is a lot muddy and quite stinky. I’m tired of wading through puddles, but those are only minor inconveniences. We have fared much better than a lot of other of our countians. There’s a lot more I could write about but really not much more I could say. Hopefully things will dry out soon and life will start moving in more typical patterns. ☀️

In Kansas and I suppose throughout the plains states, when farmsteads and farmhouses were abandoned, the structures often eventually succumbed to the harsh elements. The valuable ground they were constructed on is often cleared and reverted back to farm ground. If a good structure still sat there, all but that structure may be razed leaving only the decent outbuilding or nothing at all. It’s at those sites where homes once adorned with flower gardens once stood that you will find “ghost gardens”. Every spring, beds of Iris, jonquils, daffodils will spring forth in the middle of ditches and on the filterstrips along fields or next to old delapidated barns . A few years ago, The hubs and I went in search (with permission) to dig iris rhizomes so we could add some color to our yard. We dug brown, yellow and a wide variety of purple irises along with the prize of some beautiful purple Louisiana irises.
I just imagine the women and men who planted them, decades ago and imagine how proud they were.
I wonder who they were, and I thank them for sharing.

3 years ago, our next door neighbor moved. His parcel of land consisted of 5 city lots. On it, was a delapidated single story house and
an rickety single wide trailer house. Our fear was an outsider purchasing it as rental property which would leave us with a string of come and go tenants seeking cheap rent and the eyesore of the structures.

After much debate the decision was made to purchase the somewhat adjoining (there is a mostly abandoned alley between the two properties) This gave us a half city block including Chicken Creek.

The razing of the old house and trailer is a long tale in itself, but subsequently the property was cleaned up and we began our “personal park” project. Each year we make changes and improvements, but the little patio and garden area has been quite therapeutic and a joy. Many an beverage has been enjoyed in the relative peace of our little park. Let me share some of my favorite spots.