“Where the bluebonnets roll/And the white clouds sail slowly by/Where the little grey hawk/Pauses and hangs in the sky/I’m the lone shooting star/The sweet whip-poor-will’s cry/And the summer’s full moon/Where the bluebonnets roll.”
–“Where Bluebonnets Roll By,” by Tony Norris
Abilene is close. We glide through the short grass prairie of the Llano Estacado. Down along the Brazos, dark thunderheads work northward into our path.
They say you can’t go home, but this sure smells like home—the sour hot engine smell of the pump jacks rocking on the oil wells and dust mixing with the cedar and mesquite rising on the approaching storms. I’ve been making big circles around the US for weeks now doing gigs in New England and visiting old friends. I hadn’t anticipated this trip back. I returned to Flagstaff to hear my sister was in hospital and dying.
Eleven years older than me, Shirley was right in the middle of 11 children. She provided a lot of my care and oversight when I was young. You know when the studio credits roll at the beginning of a movie? I think the Columbia Pictures lady with her dark hair and torch held aloft looks just like my lovely sister when she was young.
Her yard is full of vehicles and it’s hard to find a place to park where you aren’t on the lawn or in a great puddle. The water in the puddles is really a thin mud the color of tan khaki work pants.
Where did all the dogs come from? Big dogs and medium-sized dogs and big dogs and there’s a pair of tiny ones. Seven dogs! She doesn’t like dogs any better than me. Our father was able to express affection to his dogs but never his children. On his death bed our black-sheep brother demanded, “Say you love me.” His reply? “I love my dogs.” All her kids are there and the grandkids. And their dogs.
Over the next three days we remember and tell stories and sing songs. We laugh a great deal and cry almost as much. Both feel equally good. Shirley is home through hospice. She gives instructions and advice to adult and child alike as they lie beside her in her vast bed. She doesn’t want to be embalmed. She wants a plain pine box, and burial is to be in the Buffalo Gap Cemetery where her husband is buried. A few weeks before she visited, and the bluebonnets just rolled to the horizon.
Shirley’s 10-year-old granddaughter Emma comes in from the playhouse in the back yard every 15 minutes in a new costume. Shirley has shopped yard sales and thrift stores for decades to equip the play house, first for her daughters and then theirs. Emma walks clothed in a ’60s ivory wedding gown with zebra-striped platform heels and does a runway stroll and spin at the foot of Shirley’s bed for all our enjoyment. Later outfits include a corset and tutu and an all-black suit with a pillbox hat and veil. Her brother chose to wear a T-shirt with the grim reaper boldly displayed. Seven dogs keep up a rousing cacophony just outside the bedroom door and hurl themselves at the child gate blocking the laundry room door.
The doorbell rings regularly. There stands a friend or neighbor with arms filled with dishes. In Texas we eat our grief. Golden slabs of cornbread. Pans of black-eyed peas with the tender snap pods swimming in rich buttery “pot likker.” Plates of pink smoky brisket and savory ham and yes, mashed potatoes with lumps. Delicate baked sweet potatoes unencumbered by sugar and marshmallows. Made-from-scratch chocolate cream pies, spice cakes and old fashioned sugar cookies. We told stories about our rambling sad family, wept and ate and then did it all over again.
It was so good to practice those simple acts with family. I was reunited with my youngest sister for the first time in 42 years. It was sad and sweet to find she was the image of our mother. Eleven children create divergent countries with different customs and religious practices and guarded borders. But they share language and diet. And memories. I moved way out on the windswept desert to escape some of the dark ones. In my heart I kept looping back to look down on a life lived around an old stone schoolhouse. With calm grace and humor Shirley died. Surrounded by a quiver full of kids and grandkids. And dog farts.
