feralferret
Veteran Member
Kathy, thank you.
Story Shadows on Crescent Lake
- Thread starter Kathy in FL
- Start date
TeaMom07
Life is too short to drink bitter tea.
"This is a slow developing story. What eventually arrives requires a lot of character development and development of the universe this story exists inside. Hopefully it isn't boring you all out of your skulls. LOL"
I love that your stories are not constrained by the same set of rules that govern most fiction writing. Each story unfolds organically, and comes across as a real person telling their story.
I love that your stories are not constrained by the same set of rules that govern most fiction writing. Each story unfolds organically, and comes across as a real person telling their story.
Chapter 20
A couple of days passed. Everyone was watching to see that I would behave without VBS or music camp as an incentive, I woke up an hour later than normal and freaked out a little. I rushed into the kitchen not wanting to get in trouble. There sat Gigi.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t want to get in trouble,” I said in panic.
Gigi looked up and smiled. “Relax Girly. My parents did what I expected them to do. They took off for their planned two-week vacation in the Georgia Mountains really early this morning to meet up with a couple from Mom and Dad’s old church they went to when they first got married. I overheard them talking about how they plan on looking at some property up there now that they had what they needed.”
“Huh?” All I could do was blink.
“Yep. That means we have two weeks to work on our plans. Come eat your breakfast so we can start our day.”
“That stuff you told me when we didn’t go see the peacock’s?”
“You have that right Girly. And now it is time to get down to business.”
What was business? Well for a few days I helped her move boxes that had been stored way back in the attic and under the house’s crawl space. The ones from the attic were mostly okay but the ones from under the house were nasty. Those we cleaned up the contents the best we could and I learned another secret. Gigi had a car. Well, it wasn’t really a car but one of those weird three-wheeled trucks that even my brother thought was neat. We cleaned up and repacked all the stuff we had gotten out of storage. Some of it went to the trash. Some of it was bagged up to take to a donation site. But a lot of it was repacked in the storage tubs that had been emptied of stuff that went to the trash, and early one morning we took them to a storage garage like Dad had rented.
“You need to play along just in case someone sees us. And they may not tell us they see us, just report it to my parents.”
“What does play along mean?”
“You’re smart Girly. You’ll see. And we won’t even have to lie.”
From the storage place we went to a park, ate a biscuit and tuna fish salad sandwich that Gigi had put into a picnic bag, drank some cool water where the day was getting really hot away from the lake’s wind, and then she said she had a surprise. The school was emptying their depository of old books, desks, and stuff like that and we were going to look for some schoolbooks for me.
When we got there, we found a bunch of people leaving while saying it was just a bunch of old and out-of-date junk. According to Gigi they thought they were going to be able to pick stuff up for free or cheap and then re-sell it for a profit.
“Isn’t that kind of what you said you did with your flea market business?” I asked, trying not to sound sassy.
She smiled, letting me know private conversation questions were okay. “Yes. But … you have to know how to price things. Some people want way too much for their old junk and sometimes people just don’t know what they have and it doesn’t get noticed because it is too cheap and people think it’s just junk and not worth their time; or isn’t shown right or gets tossed in with stuff that doesn’t make any of it look any good.”
“Er … shown?”
“Like when you go to a store and you see stuff all set up nice so that it makes people go look at it and think about buying it.”
“Oh. Aunt Diane used to drag me with her when she went window shopping. She’d always wind up buying something she said she shouldn’t have like weird shoes or jewelry or a top that kinda looked stupid once she got it home and tried it on with her other clothes. And Dad and Thunder liked to go to car shows where people would be selling things.”
“Good job Girly. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. What I used to do was have a three or four big table booth and each table would have its own stuff all set up nice and neat. And different times of the year I’d sell different things. People never had to guess how much something was, but I was also willing to haggle, especially if they were going to buy more than one item. I don’t have enough inventory to have that number of tables. Let me tell you something but keep it to yourself, ‘K?”
I nodded.
“One of Bruce’s uncles is moving back here. He is going to take a lease on one of the empty storefronts downtown. He’s trying to get one right on the corner of Main and 17 with big plate glass windows and it’s all renovated inside. It has all these different little rooms and areas. There’s even an upstairs with good stairs to get to it. His grandmother passed away last year, and they’ve got a bunch of old furniture, collectibles, and books to get rid of that belonged to her husband when he had an antique business before he died. Like barn fulls of the stuff from what he described. Mr. Thad showed me pictures. I don’t know whether to say it is awful or providential. Mr. Thad is going to talk to Dad about me working at the store on Fridays and Saturdays to start with. I won’t be working alone, they just think those are going to be the busiest days. Mr. Thad says I can bring you with me. You’ll do school at the store on Fridays and on Saturdays we’ll be putting our time to good use and being productive.”
“Um … will Aunt Anne say that’s okay?” I asked cautiously.
“You bet. This way she can do her ladies’ auxiliary stuff without feeling like she has to bring me along, dad can do his puttering around at the church thing … which he’s kinda good at and gives him purpose so he doesn’t go into a decline according to what Mom tells her friends when they’re all talking about how their husbands are handling retirement. But …”
“But I better not repeat that kind of thing.”
“You got it Girly,” she giggled like it was a special kind of secret we had.
I still wasn’t sure of her plan but was willing to go along so long as it didn’t get me in trouble. Besides, we were inside the old warehouse storage space, and it was too hot to think about stuff too hard. I pushed the shopping buggy we’d been allowed to use, after paying at the kiosk to get it off a chain, while Gigi picked up stuff off the long tables that had been set up. Books were piled all over the place, but they also had signs of what kind of books they were so it was kinda organized. I saw the music books right off the bat. They only had a couple for guitar, and they were all by this guy Alfred. Gigi glanced through them and then put them in the buggy.
“Whew. Nothing in there Mom or Dad can object to. Hopefully though you’ll also get music lessons at church. Beginners and intermediates have classes on Wednesday nights right before church starts. We’ll have to see what the schedule is going to be. Children’s Choir is on Sundays and I’m pretty sure Mom is going to expect you to participate in that. AWANA will be on Wednesday nights when school starts back up in August. Mom will definitely expect you to participate in that though Dad might try and object.”
“Uh oh,” I said, thinking I didn’t want to see Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau fight.
“No, it’ll be okay. Mom will have her way, it’s just Dad was raised really strict in a really old-fashioned community and doesn’t think some of the stuff that gets taught at church these days is what should be taught or maybe the way it should be taught. Or something. I used to remember more about that than I do now, but the most important thing is Mom will have her way on AWANAs. I also plan on getting you involved with the home school co-op. All the Evanston kids are home schooled though the girls go more for a social outlet than they do for the classes that you can sign up for. Let’s go look at the readers and see if there is anything that will pass Mom’s tests.”
She got all excited when she found a bunch of books that were on Aunt Anne’s approved list[1]: Caddie Woodlawn, Adam of the Road, Johnny Tremaine, Strawberry Girl, The Door in the Wall, Carry On Mr. Bowditch, Rifles for Watie, The Bronze Bow, and Sarah, Plain and Tall, Heidi, Understood Betsy, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Pollyanna, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, An Old-Fashioned Girl, Calico Captive, Rose in Bloom, Limberlost, Emily of New Moon, Eight Cousins, and Elsie Dinsmore. She told me that most of them were above my reading level but that I could grow into them, and maybe sooner than expected as she knew I could read better than I let on at church.
I shrugged. “I had to be careful at my old school. If you were too far above what your permanent record said you were supposed to be, they did things to make you look more like they thought you should. I learned to read because people always said I wouldn’t … one of my eyes was stuck when I was born but this doctor at the military hospital put a patch on it and it got unstuck or something. Then the people at school kept saying I couldn’t read but that was more like shouldn’t read. You know what Thunder told me?”
“No, what?” she asked while looking at a set of old encyclopedias.
“He said it used to be you didn’t have to start school until you were six instead of three-years-old like it is now. I never knew if he was joking or not.”
She glanced at me and said, “He wasn’t joking. I forget just when the age changed, but it was a big deal. A lot of people liked it because daycare costs went way down. But some people didn’t because they thought that was too young for a kid to be taken out of the home for so many hours in a day. Then there were the people that found out if their kids were in school, they didn’t have any excuse they couldn’t get a job, so the government cut off some of their benefits. I know Aunt Marjorie worked from home because of Dana and they say she worked when you were a baby until she got too sick. But they still expected you to be in school. Where did you go to school?”
“They put me in the special school because they thought I might be like Dana,” I said with a shrug. “Dad had started to talk about putting me in a different school but … things kinda happened.”
She sighed and then said something I didn’t expect. “I’m sorry no one said anything about your birthday.”
I shrugged again. “We had a family party before I came to live here. All our birthdays are in June … Mom’s, Dad’s, Thunder’s and Dana’s, and mine. But the birthday party made Mom sad, so they didn’t do it anymore. Then this year Dad said we were going to change that because everything else was changing and we had a fun day with stuff all three of us liked.” I sighed. “But now I’m seven so I gotta make sure and not be a baby about stuff. I just miss them.”
I was trying really hard not to show just how sad I was but Gigi seemed to understand. “Maybe next year we can work something out. We’ll just need to be careful. Mom and Dad only celebrate Easter week, Advent and Christmas, and Thanksgiving and the only reason we celebrate Thanksgiving is because the church puts on a community dinner for those that might not get a meal otherwise. Easter we celebrate at church because a lot of the older folks don’t have family in the area so there’s a dinner after services. Christmas … might not be what you are used to. We’ll have to see how that goes. Hard to predict.”
She dropped the subject after that, and we kept looking at the books. She got all excited about some books she found. I thought she was going to dance on the tables when she found this box that had to be sold “as is” and “everything or nothing”. In hindsight I figure it must have been some teacher’s personal resource files that got left behind or taken away or something. There was a book in there called The Prairie Primer. Underneath that book was a bunch of readers; all the Little House books[2] and what Gigi told me were the Spin Off books. The Martha Year[3], The Charlotte Years[4], The Caroline Years[5], and The Rose Years[6]. There were a bunch of other books in there that went with the Little House books like a cookbook, a couple of craft books, a couple of unit studies (though I didn’t know what they were at the time), and other biographies of the Ingalls family. There was even a music book.
“I’m going to find all these books in digital format if I can, but for now these books are a super duper stupendous find,” Gigi said excitedly. “Just don’t say anything about them to Mom. I haven’t got her completely convinced to do unit studies yet. I’m hoping she’ll just forget about it all and concentrate on her own stuff.” Gigi was wound up but she was also showing she could be clever and cagey.
“Uh …”
“Before we go home, we have some things to talk about. Consider it part of that private family stuff.”
“The peacock walk stuff?”
Yes, and that’s actually what we started calling it when other people were around. Sometimes we would go for a “Peacock Walk” so we could talk something out but most of the time we just called it “Peacock Stuff”. It kept our business ours and it also helped us not to make a mistake by letting other people know.
[1] Fiction Books for Girls — Most Interesting Series and Authors
[2] https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/little-house/
[3] Little House: The Martha Years Series by Melissa Wiley
[4] Little House: The Charlotte Years Series by Melissa Wiley
[5] https://www.fictiondb.com/series/the-caroline-years~8946.htm
[6] https://www.fictiondb.com/series/the-rose-years-roger-lea-macbride~9839.htm
Thank You Kathy.
Chapter 21
Boy was what we talked about private family stuff. I didn’t understand much of it back then, but Gigi just told me to hold onto all my thoughts and that as I got older it would start making sense, but that I needed to keep everything “Peacock Stuff”.
Gigi loved her parents. She really, really did. She never stopped loving them even as they were not nice to her. I think she loved Bruce too, and never stopped loving him even though he hurt her, even as he permanently damaged her. As I understood some things that came out later, what Bruce did to Gigi broke something in him too. Not just the kind of broke and sorry you get when you get caught but the kind of broke and sorry you get when you realize you’ve done something you can never take back and that you can never be sorry enough for. I heard whispers that that was the reason he took the offer to go into the military in place of completing his prison sentence. I heard people say that he “suicided by draft” because he couldn’t get over what he’d done to Gigi. Yeah, and people are stupid.
I don’t know what to believe. I don’t think Gigi was able to really understand her feelings for Bruce, so she didn’t think about it or ignored it or whatever. I do know that she broke down when we found out he’d died. I don’t know everything and that’s a fact. Even with Gigi and I being so close. I do know that Gigi was conflicted or whatever you want to call it. She didn’t talk about him much. Sometimes it seemed she treated it all like a bad dream, or maybe a car wreck with injuries that she survived. She got over it. She didn’t drag the bad memories around with her all the time. But there was just something I doubt I’ll ever fully understand. I’ll just have to leave that at the Heavenly Gates like I’m having to leave so much other stuff.
Be that as it may, even as a little kid I knew I always had to be careful about any of that emotional stuff because it could send Gigi into a “depressive episode,” or that’s what I read it called in a book. Me? I’m not sure how I feel. I know I loved Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau like a kid loves people, as part of the natural order of things, at least back then. Now? I have to be careful not to fall into hating them and being bitter. I still feel like what they eventually did caused more heartache than should have happened and so I’ve left them to my brother to deal with if he has anything to do with them.
See it went something like this. Gigi getting hurt by her husband caused my aunt and uncle a lot of legal fees. It ate up a lot of Uncle Beau’s retirement income right when they could least afford it because of some financial decisions he and Aunt Anne had made that they then had to put on hold. It took a bit (Gigi married at 18 and by 21 she was brain injured), but the legal stuff got cleared up, Gigi was granted a divorce (but it was never filed for some reason) from Bruce and went back to using her maiden name – Miller instead of Evanston. Bruce was sent to prison, but not just for assault but for some other stuff that came out during the investigation… drugs and stuff like that. Gigi got all his stuff in the settlement; but she wasn’t really with it enough at the time and it sat in storage. He actually had some money because of an inheritance, but it wasn’t a great big gobbledygook of money but it took care of the storage fees for a long time. The court forced the insurance company to fork over a bunch of money into a medical fund to take care of Gigi because it was partly their fault she didn’t get the correct treatment right off because they denied the claim and made some other mistakes that made things worse. Had Gigi been treated sooner by specialists she may have avoided some of the permanent damage.
Then they went through thinking she was bipolar or psychotic and whether it was due to the brain injury or not because there are two examples of women on Uncle Beau’s side of his family that had some issues. Gigi was finally seen by this really good doctor and by 24 she was as good as she was going to get. She was much improved from where she had been right after she’d been beat up, but the rest she needed to learn to live with and she needed medication to do it properly no matter how much her parents wanted it to be otherwise.
But Uncle Beau’s early life and growing up in a family with people with “issues” didn’t make him very sympathetic and Aunt Anne is just about too stiff for words. Having their son leave them over the situation that happened between Gigi and Bruce just made it worse. So did their guilt though I don’t know if they’ve ever admitted that part. Then when the story gets to the part about border closures and all the rest and they wouldn’t help her get a bigger supply of her meds because they said she needed to learn to live without them like so many other people were doing … yeah, I’ll get to the part eventually where my heart has turned bitter against them.
See, there was a medical fund that Gigi’s parents control. As soon as the really big doctor bills for Gigi stopped they started using that money to reimburse all the money that they’d paid out in legal fees and such. And even if you can pretzel your conscience to agreeing that was okay, they started using that money for other things that they claimed were for Gigi … home improvements, house hunting to get her away from where everything happened so she could start fresh, stuff like that. Only somehow it morphed and they kinda left her behind when I came on the scene, or used me as the justification for what they did saying after they didn’t need to take care of me anymore, I’d go back to living with Dad and then Gigi would move back with her parents and etc etc. And that’s also part of their rationalization using the money from my Trust.
Gigi explained things to me up to that point and said, “I know you think we should say something to Uncle Mack and Thunder but … but I’m asking you not to. I swear I’ll take care of you forever. And I won’t run off from you the way your Aunt Diane or them other caregivers did. I’ll be with you for life. But for that to happen I need …”. She stopped and looked around before saying quietly, “Before that can happen, we need to get out from under Mom and Dad. I don’t have it all figured out yet but … but I can feel it is possible when I never did before. You gotta trust me on this Girly. We’ll get it figured out.”
And for whatever reason, I always did trust Gigi. Even when she was in one of her manic episodes she was always all about the Gigi and Girly staying together forever. Maybe that should have weirded me out, but it didn’t. I was tired of people leaving me. Gigi promised me forever and I was just too young to see how weird that would have been to people. To me it was just more of our “Peacock Stuff”.
So Gigi showed me how we were going to save up money. At the time we just didn’t know how, and on what, we were going to spend that money on. We knew it was an “escape plan” just not what all it would entail.
For two glorious weeks it was like a vacation. We still had regular get up and go to sleep hours. We still had a schedule. Gigi still checked off the list of chores and projects that Aunt Anne had left her. We still followed the rules of not touching things that Uncle Beau had left us. But other than that, time was ours and Gigi seemed to be reliving – or living it the first time around – through me.
Dad was available for both zoom calls and I was happier than I had been which they assumed meant that I was settling in better. Gigi let me talk but Dad could only stay on 15 minutes, same as the other times. Thunder stayed on longer but not much longer because he was taking a summer course load that was starting to “kick his keester”. But he apologized for his “language” and reminded me not to talk like that in front of the aunt and uncle, and he’d try and remember to be better too. I still cherish the memories of those early zoom calls. We were all so carefree.
Another thing we did, to prepare for school to start in August was we went on two field trips to the library. One was a kid one on the solar system where we got to create a craft where we colored the sun and planets and then hung them on a stick in the order they rotate in our solar system. That was cool. But to pass Aunt Anne’s and Uncle Beau’s standards Gigi helped me to tape an index card on it that said, “Day 4 – Genesis 1:17”. In fact, Gigi did things like that for all our “lessons” and “field trips” so any pop inspections by her parents could be conquered. That’s what I mean about being cagey, even despite her life altering brain injury.
The other library activity was on physics with the human body. We almost got caught with that one because Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau arrived back a day early just as we were walking back to the house. They were just about to come down on us like a load of bricks until I said, “Just like in VBS! We are fearfully and wonderfully made!”
Gigi said warningly, “Rain. A little loud. Mom and Dad have had a long day of driving.”
Uncle Beau gave a sniff then added, “I’m not sure that is age appropriate.”
Aunt Anne at least gave Gigi time to respond, and it was enough for her, therefore it wound up being enough for Uncle Beau.
We emptied their car for them, took their luggage to their room, and brought in some stuff that Aunt Anne told Gigi to start teaching me to preserve … mostly it was apples and some onions. Gigi nodded and looked excited. The real kind of excited not the pretend excited because she was expected to be. I was already learning how to tell the difference.
“In a moment I wish to speak with you Gigi. Set the girl to separating the dirty clothes so we can do a washing tomorrow.
“Yes ma’am,” Gigi answered and I could see caution in her eyes which told me to watch my p’s and q’s until she figured out what was going on.
About an hour later and after I got the twenty-question interrogation from Uncle Beau Gigi said, “Let’s take our evening constitutional. Mom and Dad are eating leftovers and then going to bed, so we need to be quiet. I’ll fix grilled cheese sandwiches on the grill when we get back to keep the heat out of the house.”
We were out of the house and down the road before Gigi felt free to speak. “Tomorrow you and I need to firm up the schedule we’ve made but there will be some changes to it, and I hope you are going to be okay with them.”
“Is … is it bad?”
“Nope. Or at least it doesn’t have to be. I’m thinking it might fit into our plans, but we’ll need to be careful. I’m just going to be doing more driving than I’d like and I’m not sure how well that it is going to work with your school.”
“Do I have to go to school at the co-op? It’s called home school not co-op school.”
She giggled. “Mom said nearly the same thing only for different reasons. Let me just tell you and we’ll work on making it acceptable to Dad, so he doesn’t throw a monkey wrench into things. Mom kinda said he was on the edge of withdrawing his approval. He’s thinking to put you in a private school or something.”
“Uh uh.”
“Uh huh, so let’s do this right. Okay Girly?”
I wanted to tell her that I’d do anything not to have to go back to school as I knew it, but I didn’t know how to say it without the risk of sounding sassy.
“First? You’re going to start guitar lessons next week. Mom got her way on it like I figured she would and it is probably one of the reasons that Dad is acting sensitive or whatever you want to call it. So that’s Wednesday afternoon. You’ll also be doing AWANAs on Wednesdays and Children’s Choir on Sundays. That’s another thing that kinda pinched up Dad but since I’ve agreed to go along as a volunteer and to keep an eye on you he’s given in. And I have a job only it is kinda like we have a job. Mr. Thad already talked to Dad and Mom, and not only will we be working on Friday’s and Saturday’s but will be working every day but Sunday just part time acting as a courier for Mr. Thad’s two businesses. He runs produce stands – we won’t have to run the stands just deliver product – at a lot of farmers markets in the area. Well, not just here but all the way up to Jacksonville for some of them.”
“But that’s your business.”
She looked at me in surprise and then smiled. “It will be okay. It means we’ll be making money without the overhead.”
“Uh …”
“That means we won’t have to pay booth rent, keep up with sales tax, or anything like that. In exchange, Mr. Thad said I can set up one of the nooks in the Main Street store. Mom and Dad don’t know about that part so let’s keep that to ourselves. So, there are the farmers markets, the Vintage Store, and he also has a few booths at other antique places that he needs to turn inventory in. Unless he does enough business at his own store that he doesn’t need to spread his inventory out.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if it doesn’t sell in one store, we’ll move it to another one and put new stuff in those empty slots. Mr. Thad is slick. And since he understands how Mom and Dad can be, we’ll have work arounds that won’t require lying or anything like that. What is going to be hard is to figure out how to make it all sound like school and also find time for you to do school. One of the things we need to do tomorrow is go talk to Gwen (Daniel and Quill’s mother) to see if she can help me find a way to write it out so that it will work in your school portfolio and so that you can pass the standardized test at the end of the year that we have to turn into the school district.”
I knew what a standardized test was. Any kid in public school did. But I didn’t know what a portfolio was so I asked, “Is that like a permanent record?”
“Kinda I guess. It actually seems more like … like they are checking to make sure that I’m going to be doing things the right way so you don’t fall behind. That’s why I want to talk to Gwen. I know they have electronic binders they keep everything in. I just need to figure out how we’ll do it. Dad will want it in a form he can pick up and look at and he hates technology.”
We also talked a bit about what “preserving food” meant and how we would be using some of that for home ec. “But it is also good no matter what people might think about it being old-fashioned or too much work. I’ve got plans in my head Rain, there’s just so many ideas running around up there that I can’t get them to all come out. What I think we need to do first is figure out our schedule and your school stuff. After we have that figured out, and my brain doesn’t feel like it is in a blender, we’ll start working the other plans in. Can you live with that?”
It was strange to me – at least in the beginning – how she always talked like I was old enough to make those kinds of decisions. Like I was older than I was. I grew to compare how things had been with Mom and Aunt Diane, both of them keeping me young for their own reasons, and how it was with Dad and Thunder with both of them trying to protect me which kept me young. Gigi treated me like a partner, and I learned to live up to what I needed to – even when most people thought it was too grown up – rather than down to their lowest expectations of me, even when those expectations were motivated by love and protective instinct.
Siskiyoumom
Veteran Member
Thank you!
feralferret
Veteran Member
Thank you.
Chapter 22
It took a little bit, but we worked out a schedule and presented it to Aunt Anne the next night. Uncle Beau was at a men’s meeting and left it to Aunt Anne though he had stipulations. It was funny how Aunt Anne helped us to write things down so Uncle Beau wouldn’t object. Our schedule was really full.
On Mondays we started early in the morning picking up product to take it to Mr. Thad’s. Booth at the Jacksonville Farmers Market which started at 7:30 am. We weren’t working the booth only delivering product. Aunt Anne had us stress that it was for home ec and math and that I would be doing my school on my tablet on the hour and half drive there and back and that we wouldn’t just be playing around. She also made a note that it would mean we were gainfully busy with something productive which left Uncle Beau time to go to the Men’s weekly breakfast without having to worry. On that same day we would do all the household shopping before heading to the Grove Street Market in Gainesville that ran every Monday from 4-7pm[1]. Now Aunt Anne wasn’t pleased. She considered Gainesville a sinful town because of the university that was there, but since we were also picking up one of Uncle Thad’s daughters from one of her college classes and bringing her home “from that heathen environment” it was deemed justified.
It took nearly an hour and a half to drive from Gainesville back to Crescent City. I had to learn to go to bed right after church on Sunday night, get up really early on Monday morning, go to bed late on Monday night and then get up really early on Tuesday morning. I couldn’t have the crankies or complain or anything. If I did our plans might go up in smoke.
Tuesdays weren’t so bad. We only had to take product to the Jacksonville Farmers Market that started at 7:30 am.
Wednesdays were kinda busy again with the Volusia County Farmers Market in Deland where we had to have the product there before 7 am but since Deland[2] was a lot closer it was okay. Guitar lessons before Wednesday night church and then AWANAs during Wednesday night church. Uncle Beau kicked up a bit of a fuss saying I was too young to be staying up that late, but Aunt Anne handled it again.
Thursdays were another light day with delivering product to Ormand Beach Farmers Market by 8 am[3].
Fridays started off the busy weekend schedule. In the mornings we would help out at the Main Street Vintage store and then deliver product to Deland at the Artisan Alley Farmer’s Market in Deland every Friday night before 6pm[4].
Saturday mornings were a lot of traveling to two of four different farmers markets depending on who needed what. There was the Jacksonville Farmers Market, the Haile’s Market in Gainesville[5], the New Smyrna Beach Farmers Market[6], or the Fernandina Beach Market Place farmers’ market. We would be back to the Main Street Vintage Store by noon and then help with the afternoon rush when they were expecting the busloads of “old people” that went around visiting quilt shops and antique stores and produce stands and stuff like that. Sometimes they would first eat lunch at the Three Bananas or Brian’s BBQ in Deland or Shrimps R Us in Welaka or maybe they’d go to one of the local bikers’ saloons if they were that kind of crowd. It was apparently a booming business so that old people could socialize and visit and go do things that kept them active instead of “wasting away” in nursing homes and things like that, while somebody else did the driving.
On Sunday we didn’t work. Period. Didn’t matter if Mr. Thad was desperate or not. That was a hard and fast rule by Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau. That doesn’t mean we weren’t busy. There was Church in the morning and Children’s choir at night, or on nights there was no choir or they were practicing for a presentation I wasn’t in, I would take extra guitar lessons.
Then there were our chores at the house. Mondays used to be Wash Day but that was switched to Tuesday. Mondays became just general house cleaning, but Gigi and I tried to sneak in some housework on Sundays so that there wasn’t that much to do on Mondays. Wednesdays were sewing days if any mending needed to be done. Gigi usually did stuff like that while I was in guitar and then AWANAs if she wasn’t needed to help. Thursdays was the day we preserved food. Friday was more food prep and baking, and we also made sure the house was “spit spot” in case Aunt Anne was having people over on Saturday. Saturday we stayed out from under foot as much as possible because that was socializing day for Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau.
I was to work on my schoolwork on my tablet during the driving back and forth. Uncle Beau tried to make out like we were on probation and if we didn’t meet his expectations I’d be in private school in no time flat. Aunt Anne on the other hand made it out to be that we’d follow the schedule or she’d get involved. Kinda like her saying, “You do not want me pulling this car over.” Aunt Anne believed that kids should have all their time filled up for them so there was no opportunity for shenanigans. Uncle Beau kinda threw Gigi in that same category. Aunt Anne just made sure our time was filled up and then made sure those activities would appease Uncle Beau.
But there were other things as well. After talking to Daniel and Quill’s mom Gigi and I found out that we could join a bunch of different activity clubs too. And she recommended them because they were home school accommodating and because it looked good in a kid’s portfolio. We could also join the home school co-op’s field trip activities. Mr. Thad was real supportive of that sort of thing. He would give some of the Evanston kids the opportunity to earn money for their activities. He was also a sponsor for some of their clubs which made him feel good, helped a kid, and was free advertising. That last Gigi told me so that I wouldn’t put Mr. Thad on a pedestal since he could sometimes be a grown up stinky boy.
Daniel and Quill’s mom said in agreement, “There’s not a mean bone in his body, but he can get as wound up as some of the little boys on occasion, so you’ll just need to watch out for it when he starts up. Aunt Gertie does what she can, but you know how she is, bless her. She’s so laid back you sometimes need to check her pulse just to make sure she’s still with us.”
I thought that was a strange thing to say until I got to know the woman. She could nap in the middle of a house falling down and nothing Mr. Thad did ever ruffled her feathers except the one time she caught him climbing a ladder to clean the gutters out. When she was through, everyone within a five-mile radius knew that better not happen again and the city even sent people out the next day to make sure all the stores on that side of Main Street had their gutters cleaned and any place in their flat roofs patched. Un huh. And then she went back to cat napping when a gator made its way onto the sidewalk and blocked the entrance to the store. It was a nine-day wonder especially when animal control, who’a finally had to come remove it since it seemed to be set on staying a while, that it measured twelve feet. The news made it seem like a gator like that would run all the tourists off the local lakes. Missus Gertie just shrugged and said, “Oh well, their loss.”
So as I was seven and in 2nd grade things were a lot different than they had been the year before. School didn’t seem like school really. I didn’t my work at my own pace on my tablet without some Guidance Counselor telling me what I couldn’t do. I was encouraged to read, not prevented from it. The only stipulation that was made was that I had to do all my other chores and work before I could “read for pleasure” and that anything I read had to be on the “approved list” that Aunt Anne had devised. The thing is she hadn’t read most of the books on the list so she didn’t necessarily know what was in them. She just made assumptions that because they were “classics” and written before the 1960s (most of them anyway) they had to be “appropriate”. She wasn’t really wrong, but like I said, she didn’t always know what was in the books. Gigi didn’t either, not really, and I learned to keep some things to myself. Sometimes Thunder knew what was going on but then again, he’d had his own struggles with school not keeping up with him and he was the one to help me get around the Guidance Counselor in a way.
August was learning the new schedule and overhearing some adults at church complaining they never got a break from their kids and it was affecting their home life. On one of our Sunday “constitutionals” I finally got up the nerve to ask Gigi, “Do you want a grown up life?”
“Girly, you’re going to have to give me more information than that. I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Well, I overheard some of the grown up ladies saying they missed having a life. I think they meant they missed having a grown up life because all they did was kid stuff and activities. Do you want one of them adult lives? Our whole schedule seems to be about me and kid stuff. And some of that you don’t like doing, like the driving and when people get loud and cranky and it gives you the shakes. Are you going to get sorry and want an adult life?”
She gave my question a few minutes to roll around in her head so that the words came out of her mouth the way she wanted them to.
“Rain, all I’ve wanted for a long time was what we’re doing. We’re earning money to get free. I mean we don’t have it all worked out but earning the money is a big deal. I guess I waited so long because I didn’t want to get free only to wind up alone and I prayed for someone that would understand my issues and not be afraid of me or think I’m less than I am. And then you came along. I’ve wanted a chance to relearn things I’ve forgotten without looking stupid. Helping you with your school and all that let’s me learn stuff without having to be a little kid about it all. When I was your age I remember my parents were even stricter than they are now. They’ve … softened or something like that as they’ve gotten older. Some of the things that Gwen says we can do as field trips with the co-op are things I wanted to do as a kid but would never have been given permission to do.” She paused then asked, “Is this all just too much for you? Do you not like having me around so much?”
“I love it, Gigi. You act like you won’t leave me ever and ever like everyone else has even though they didn’t mean to. We have Peacock Stuff. But, things have to be fair and square. I don’t want you to start feeling sad and wanting an adult life. Or if you do, can we do it together?”
She gave a brilliant grin and started us walking and first said, “Hopefully we’ll see the white peacock and maybe he’ll even drop a feather and we can take it back and hide it in our treasure box until we can figure out where to put it.” I nodded to appease her. Then she said, “You don’t have to worry about me wanting an … er … adult life. My brain never got fixed so that I’ll want one, not the kind of life those women were talking about. The kind of adult I am is … different. Not all of that subject is age appropriate so the answers for you will have to wait, but you can trust me, I’ll never want a life that you aren’t in, and I hope you will grow up and feel the same. We’ll take care of each other.”
That fit perfectly in that space in my heart where I always worried about being too big of a problem and someone leaving again.
[1] Home
[2] Farmers Market – Volusia County Farm Bureau
[3] Farmer’s Market - Ormond Beach Mainstreet
[4] Artisan Alley - A place for artisans and events in Volusia County
[5] Haile Farmers Market
[6] Ormond Beach Nut Butters
larry_minn
Senior Member
I was enjoying the interplay. Then recalled how story started.. loving the story.
sssarawolf
We're just plugging along.
I finally got an opportunity to catch up. thank you.
feralferret
Veteran Member
Thanks.
Chapter 23
That first year of homeschool was a learning experience. Gwen (Daniel and Quill’s mom) recommended we use it as a decompression year … meaning we stayed in the shallow end of the pool for school and give me time to transition from a traditional classroom setting to a home school setting with different boundaries and more ways to do things. We did join the field trip club, but we didn’t join anything else so I wouldn’t get “overwhelmed” or “over stimulated” and not like school again. I wouldn’t really be old enough for most of that stuff until I was eight years old anyway.
In September school started in earnest and so did the co-op. I went on my first field trip which was a fishing and birding day on Lake George. Turns out that I swim like a fish (my preschool required early water safety lessons and PE in elementary required water therapy) after Gigi taught me to do more than dog paddle. I can whistle better than most birds who preferred cawing and that sort of noise (Mom taught me when she was teaching me how to tune a guitar), and I can fish pretty good too. It was Daniel and Quill who taught me to fish. They were being stinky boys and trying to freak me out about putting bait on my hook, but I figured it couldn’t be any worse than cutting up a chicken with Gigi. That shut them up and then we formed a team to beat out the other kids in the fishing competition.
That September we also joined a field trip to the Homeschool Day at Kennedy Space Center. That’s where I started to learn that Gigi couldn’t always handle certain types of crowds. She was getting fritzy because there were so many other people around. I mean it wasn’t so much that they were strangers but that she thought they were people that would judge her and she was really scared of failing. Gwen is the one who explained it to me when I thought I had been bad after Gigi started jerking me from place to place. She didn’t mean to, she was just Gigi-type fritzing. Gwen got her to go to a relatively quiet corner while I joined a group of our co-op kids going around to the different exhibitions to learn stuff. We’d all come in the Evanston family van (almost a mini bus) with other people driving instead of Gigi.
Gigi was real quiet the rest of the day, like she was upset. When we got back to the house, she was so quiet her parents would have noticed if they weren’t gone on another house shopping expedition.
“Aren’t we going to take our constitutional?” I asked after we cleared our dinner dishes that night.
“You … you want to?”
“If you want to. If you don’t feel good, you can sit and drink some of your tea and I’ll go outside and practice my guitar so it doesn’t hurt your head.”
She sighed then just got through it all and said, “I’m sorry I ruined the day.”
I just looked at her. To me it was one of the first really crazy things she’d ever said. “You didn’t ruin the day.” Then I thought maybe she’d gotten bullied like I used to in school and got angry. “Did someone hurt your feelings?! That’s not nice. We don’t have to do any of the school stuff anymore. I won’t let anyone hurt your feelings!”
I’d surprised her. “Whoa there Girly. No one hurt my feelings.”
“Then why do you think you ruined the day?” I was truly confused.
“My issues popped up.”
“Huh?”
“The crowds. I was reacting and … and … you had to go do things while I went to sit in the corner.”
“You were sitting on a bench, not in the corner like a bad kid. And that’s okay ‘cause you just needed some quiet. Like when I start to get overskimlated and can’t focus and stay on track.”
She looked at me for a second then her lips twitched. “Overstimulated. And that’s kinda exactly what was going on in my head. Did it embarrass you?”
“Uh uh. You just needed to get your head quiet. Like me sometimes.”
The lip twitch turned into a small grin. “You sure? It’s going to happen sometimes.”
“To me too. We just gotta help each other so Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau don’t get bad reports, or they’ll be the ones that are embarrassed.”
The small smile grew a little bit more and by the time we came back from our constitutional it was her regular big grin she had when the aunt and uncle weren’t around.
I also started to learn that driving wasn’t her favorite thing. It was okay around town in her three-wheeled truck. She didn’t even mind driving to close places like Pierson and Pomona Park, maybe all the way to Palatka if there wasn’t too much construction. But the driving we had to do in the big delivery van for the farmers markets stressed her out. And driving to places as far away as the Space Center was beyond her and that’s why we carpooled with the Evanston family. We always gave them money for fuel and brought something to go with the picnic we’d have on those days, and it was always something that Gwen could eat because they were both something called flexitarians. A flexitarian is somebody that mostly eats plants but will sometimes each a little bit of meat, dairy, and eggs, but not much and not often. Aunt Anne ate the same way, but Uncle Beau liked his “God provided meat and potatoes” so most of the meals catered to him. Everyone else just had to figure it out and that normally happened because he got the meat due to “budget constraints”.
October was really busy and Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau were gone most of the time as they were not just house hunting but were visiting family. We didn’t know it at the time, not even Gigi knew, they were planning on retiring to a “family compound” like Uncle Beau had grown up in and it didn’t really include me or even Gigi. They did come back with a carload of apples that time and that was one more chore that Gigi and I had … preserving them in a bunch of different ways. We had fun but had to be careful they didn’t see us having too much fun, so our fun was quiet and we didn’t get “wound up” which was apparently a sin.
I enjoyed cooking with Gigi because I’d never been allowed to before. I would tell Dad and Thunder about it on our zoom calls, and they would laugh and think I was just having fun. They didn’t seem to notice that I omitted the information that Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau weren’t around. I didn’t tell them everything, just the stuff that seemed to make them happy. I had a feeling that they were doing the same thing, but I figured that’s just what people do for people they care about. You want them to be happy, so you don’t talk about sad stuff. Gigi is who I talked to about that stuff and she talked to me. Maybe that was a little different, especially given our age difference, but it is how we survived where we were at.
I know Aunt Anne had us doing what she called chores mostly so that our “time would be used constructively” but it was also a way to save on groceries for us while they were out of town. On our daily “constitutionals” Gigi would talk about how she used to help our grandmother when she was my age.
“That stuff I do remember. When she and Grandad had the empty lot in full production just tons and tons of stuff would come out of it and there would even be enough to trade or give away.”
“Er … what kind of stuff?”
She laughed quietly. “I mean fruits and veggies, Silly Girly. I’d love …”
Then she stopped and fairly vibrated out of her shoes like a silly cartoon I’d seen once. “I need to add that to the plan somehow. Do you know, Grandma left the lot and her house to me. Mom and Dad says it is in an irrevocable trust. I think that is one reason why they didn’t sell it. That and Job’s name is on the Trust too.” She took us back to the house by a different route and showed me the house and the lot.
I looked at it and looked at her. “It’s like right here.”
“Yep, just two doors down. And see that little house? That’s my grandparents’ house.”
“Who lives there now?”
“Well, kinda no one. It gets rented out sometimes on verbo.”
“Oh what?”
“It is a service that does what is called short term rentals. Like those cabins that Mom and Dad stay at when they go out of town. Or places on the beach. It is kinda like a hotel but not really.”
“Uh … is that why the mowing guy is always fussing at Uncle Beau?”
“Eh … it is part of it. Don’t say anything to Dad though. You saw how … anyway …”
I nodded quickly at that. Uncle Beau could get his own kind of wound up. The landscape company owner had a “sailor mouth” if you know what I mean and that usually got Uncle Beau all pinched up. Uncle Beau started talking more and more about needing to get away from the Heathen World. Aunt Anne would hush him and then look at Gigi and I to see if we were thinking about what he said because now that I’m older, I know they were trying to hide stuff.
Gigi was like a kid out of school most of that month. She was getting over her own bashfulness, especially when the Evanston family was around. No one really made any noise about Gigi not being my parent because the Evanston clan didn’t treat it like it wasn’t normal. And we had so much to do it kept her fidgets under control. As soon as my aunt and uncle left to travel, Gigi took me to the library for something she was interested in. I didn’t understand all of it but the pictures they put on the big screen were interesting. It was the historical society, and some lady was talking about “Frances Drake and the Sacking of St. Augustine in 1586”. We went to St. Augustine the next day on a home school field trip. It was to the Alligator Farm[1] over there but after that was done, we got to ride a trolley[2] around St. Augustine because Darla’s father-in-law (Darla was Gwen’s sister) worked for that company and got us all discount tickets. That was really fun, the kind of fun we didn’t mention to anyone.
Gwen also invited us to go to some fall festivals. “Gigi, please come. I know you are working a lot, but Daniel and Quill behave so much better when Rain is around. They don’t like being kept back with the younger kids, but I just can’t handle them in the older group just yet. I count on them too much. And yes, I know that isn’t fair but …”
“Sure, we’ll come,” Gigi said to make her feel better. “But I’ll need to figure out how to sell it to Mom and Dad if they ask.”
“Geometry and critical thinking skills,” was Gwen’s nearly instant reply.
Gigi smiled and wrote it down in her little notepad she took everywhere in her pocket so she’d remember everything. A habit I got into as well. The notepads were really small, we had a big box of them from the flea market before they ran out, but they did what we needed them to.
The geometry and critical thinking skills came from the corn mazes at the fall festivals. We learned physics from the pumpkin tosses. And we learned math from guessing how many corn kernels were on a cob. And we ate things that we’d never be allowed if my aunt and uncle were around – like cotton candy and candied apples – so we only talked about corn on the cob and regular apples.
One type of field trip that Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau never fussed about was when we went to gardens. Like that month we went on a field trip to the St. John’s Botanical Garden. What they would have fussed about is that Gigi started talking to some of the people that worked there and learned about stuff that she was putting together for our plan. She’d talk to me about it some, but she said her brain was still in a blender on it. I did understand it had something to do with “native plants” and the lot that had belonged to our grandparents.
[1] St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park | Alligator Attractions and Exhibits, Zoo, Zip Lining, Bird Rookery and Nature and Wildlife Exhibits
[2] St. Augustine Tours and Sightseeing with Old Town Trolley
sssarawolf
We're just plugging along.
thank you for another chapter.larry_minn
Senior Member
I have seen a few people that had mental issues. Given. Bit of supervision, people to turn to if needed. They can be some of the best workers, and so happy, and proud.
Local recycling place was a joy to go to. They hired adults from a group home. They were so helpful the biggest danger is I keep supplies in car trunk. If I did not designate. They would take everything but plastic cooler, and tool box. “Just the white plastic bags of aluminum cans, the cardboard box of cardboard, and black garbage bags of tin cans. Could I get the white bags back to reuse?”
Trunk is empty. I go in they are weighing bags, carefully opening, putting cans on belt conveyor to crusher. Handing me bags back. I recall how happy, proud they were. But the grant ended. IMO it was worth it. You know how good a person feels when doing job they can do, be appreciated.
In hospital best janitor had issue. Very quiet, respectful. But you start talking he opened up. Did excellent job. Mom was there asked where to get coffee. He gave directions carefully. Then said. “If you want plain coffee, just non dairy cream/suger packets I can get it”. Brought it in room for her. From staff machine. Some just need a bit of help and can do a better job than other folks.
Local recycling place was a joy to go to. They hired adults from a group home. They were so helpful the biggest danger is I keep supplies in car trunk. If I did not designate. They would take everything but plastic cooler, and tool box. “Just the white plastic bags of aluminum cans, the cardboard box of cardboard, and black garbage bags of tin cans. Could I get the white bags back to reuse?”
Trunk is empty. I go in they are weighing bags, carefully opening, putting cans on belt conveyor to crusher. Handing me bags back. I recall how happy, proud they were. But the grant ended. IMO it was worth it. You know how good a person feels when doing job they can do, be appreciated.
In hospital best janitor had issue. Very quiet, respectful. But you start talking he opened up. Did excellent job. Mom was there asked where to get coffee. He gave directions carefully. Then said. “If you want plain coffee, just non dairy cream/suger packets I can get it”. Brought it in room for her. From staff machine. Some just need a bit of help and can do a better job than other folks.
feralferret
Veteran Member
Thank you.
Chapter 24
November ran about the same way as October, just with the only fieldtrip being to Ormand Beach Seafood Festival. Gigi and Gwen had a blast. They were bigger kids than the rest of us were. Daniel and Quill’s sisters were a little embarrassed by how silly they were (especially when they started dancing and singing stuff from when they were in school). Daniel and Quill acted like their mom and Gigi might have eaten something with red dye in it. Me? They made me want to laugh. I liked to see Gigi happy. When Gigi was happy I could be happy.
“Hey,” Daniel said. “What’s up?”
“Huh?” I asked, leery of possible Stinky Boy stuff.
“Gigi and Mom are kinda … acting like girls instead of moms.”
Quill sighed and answered before I could. “Doh. Dad got a full-time job after being laid off for most of this year. And Gigi … you know … she’s just the way she is. Mom is happy so Gigi is happy. And Mom is happy because of Dad’s new job and Gigi is you know … getting over stuff.” To me he said, “They’ll calm down before we go home. Don’t freak out.”
Looking at him like he was being stupid rather than stinky I said, “I wasn’t the one freaking out just because your mom and Gigi were having a good day.”
Quill looked at me and then said, “Nah. Just … be careful. Mr. and Mrs. Miller … er …”
Before he could say anything else I shushed him and said, “Gigi and I have it worked out.
Quill and Daniel both looked at me then asked, “How?”
“None of your business. We just know we have to be careful how we act so people won’t run their stupid mouths. We are only here with your family and Gigi trusts you all.”
“And you?”
I looked at Daniel and rolled my eyes. “You’re boys. You are almost older boys. But I guess you are okay. You taught me to fish. That’s gotta be worth something.”
They both looked at me like I was an interesting specimen they found on the trail for Scouts. I let it go and caught back up with Gigi. What I didn’t tell them was that I liked them better than the girls. Their sisters and older cousins were kinda okay, but the girls their age and younger in the home school group and at church sometimes made me itch to push them over. Gigi told me they were just being catty and to ignore them, so I tried though I thought calling those girls catty was an insult to cats. Besides, even if there weren’t field trips we were still going a lot of the time, just for other reasons and I knew I needed to watch my p’s and q’s and not just because Thunder and Dad reminded me at the end of every zoom call.
The farmers’ markets were a lot busier and so was Mr. Thad’s store. Some of it was because the “Snow Birds” were here – people that lived up north during the summer but moved down south where they usually lived when things started getting cold up north. But there was other stuff going on. Some I understood and some I didn’t. Gigi told me that more people were interested in fresh food. There was like some huge scare about stuff you could buy in the grocery store being contaminated. Some of it was the people that had trouble having babies were thinking that it might be the food in the grocery stores making that worse or outright causing it on purpose. Some of it was the stuff in the grocery stores was just getting really expensive.
“We need to make a plan,” she told me during one of our constitutionals. “Dad has already mentioned cutting back on the grocery budget to make sure we aren’t wasting anything or buying stuff inappropriate while they are out of town.”
Having learned that I could be a little sassy around Gigi as long as I wasn’t being sassy to her I asked, “If they are so worried about that, then why do they always leave?”
Gigi gave me a look, reminding me whether they were there or not I still needed to stay in the habit of being careful. “That’s a question, isn’t it.” She sighed. “I think their trips are more expensive than they budgeted for, and I know for a fact they aren’t able to get as much money out of the two Trusts as they expected. Mine they’ve emptied of all the money that could be used for administrative stuff. And yours …,” she stopped looking around carefully. “Uncle Mack is asking questions and that means that Thunder is watching. They’re having to be more careful with the amounts and how they word the requests. I know Dad is upset by that but that’s only going to slow them down, it isn’t going to stop them.”
Then I heard her under her breath, like it wasn’t for my ears, “Please help me to honor my mother and father. I don’t mean to be a bad daughter, but I still have to do what’s right.”
I learned that it was a lot harder on Gigi than I’d been taking notice of and I tried from that point forward to try harder and intentionally not put Gigi in a difficult position.
Another trick I learned was when I was being interrogated by my aunt and uncle was to say things like “Gigi says that you say …” or sometimes just “Gigi says …” though the second one I was careful with so it couldn’t be used against her which happened ever so often when Uncle Beau didn’t like my answers being right.
The other thing about November (and this rolled into December as well), was that Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau were around more. Uncle Beau acted like a man being ridden by something. He spent a lot of time on the phone and reluctantly on his old computer. Aunt Anne supported him but something else crawled beneath her motivations. Of course, I couldn’t say it like that when I was seven and in all honesty I couldn’t have said something like that until this past year after reading a lot of historical fiction during the few minutes I had. The old folks could say things like that and not make it sound crazy. I can say them here in this journal. I doubt I’ll ever say them aloud to anyone though. I know my limits.
What I mean is that it didn’t matter that Gigi and I were working a lot. My school almost didn’t matter because Gigi cleared everything with the written “Acceptable” list. There were two things that were absolutely non-negotiable. First was that part of the pay that Gigi brought home from delivering product to Mr. Thad’s vendor stalls at the farmers’ market, was actual product. It was used to feed all of us, but it was also preserved to be our meals when she and Uncle Beau were away from home “visiting”.
The second non-negotiable was how involved with church functions that Gigi and I had to be. Guitar recitals for end of autumn term. Practice for the Thanksgiving program. Practicing Ode to Joy by Beethoven to be part of the caroling party as well as at the Christmas production. Participating in the Children’s Christmas production. Helping to set up and break down the Thanksgiving dinner on the grounds. Set up and breaking down for the Christmas dinner on the grounds. Helping to clean the church and keep is spiffy because that time of year we had a lot of visitors. But we were to stay in the background and not show off. It was okay for my aunt and uncle to get good reports on us, but they didn’t want us to get full of ourselves either.
Between all the church stuff, the work stuff, and the school stuff I was so tired I would sometimes cry while I practiced my guitar out on the screened in lanai where no one could see, not even Gigi. If they noticed when I came in they assumed it is because my fingers hurt from practice. But it wasn’t that. It could be cold out there on the lanai, but it was better than the cold inside the house. I got tired enough that even Dad asked to speak to Aunt Anne during one of the zoom calls. It was mid-December and she put it down to being the first Thanksgiving and Christmas without Thunder and him. Thunder got sick over Thanksgiving break, so I hadn’t seen anyone. Dad told her to put me back on the tablet and said he was sorry I was feeling sad, but I needed to try and do my best. He didn’t say it like it was my fault or I was being bad which I had worried about. He said that hopefully Thunder would see me at Christmas.
And he did. It was a surprise. Kinda a big surprise because he hadn’t warned anyone he was coming. I’ve always wondered if he did it to “check on things”. My brother is smart and I guess he had some experience with the family I didn’t since he was older. And maybe Dad had said something. I don’t know. I do know that my aunt and uncle kinda let up after Christmas was over. They also couldn’t say boo about the Christmas presents that Thunder had brought with him and Gigi had to hide a smile behind her hand because you could tell a boy had tried to wrap things himself. He used way more tape than he should have and the bow and ribbon he tied on a couple of them made them look like he wasn’t going to let them escape or something. And the colors didn’t match.
Uncle Beau pretty much vanished while Thunder was there, claiming he had to help with the church’s banners or something like that. My presents included a real fishing pole with a tackle box full of stuff. That was because I liked fishing and bringing in fish for dinner sometimes. Dad had Thunder dug through the stuff in the storage place and got out my mother’s guitar picks and guitar tuner. He gave me new strings and a guitar maintenance kit. My “big gift” was a new tablet for school and an external memory cube. Thankfully Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau didn’t know or understand how advanced the new tablet was because Thunder slipped it inside a protective frame that made it look like something for a really little kid. But I saw him give Gigi a wink, so I knew something else was going on. I found out that the external memory cube had a lot of memory on it and Gigi and I started making a habit of saving everything possible on the cub and then hiding the cube when we weren’t at home to prevent Aunt Anne or Uncle Beau from getting too curious about it. There were extra memory slots and Gigi told me that Thunder had left money with her to buy cards and that he might send some as well because he could get them super cheap on campus with his student discount.
Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau were a little scandalized about the fishing gear because that was a “boy’s gift” but since they benefitted from it, they let it go. The tablet they really weren’t happy about until Gigi said she would take it to Pastor Calvin again since the parental controls were at least as strong on the new tablet as on the old one and she would need to transfer my school stuff over and she’d prefer having the Pastor oversee it to make sure it was done correctly since his part-time job was in IT. That made Uncle Beau more relaxed and Uncle Beau relaxing made Aunt Anne relax.
Another secret I learned was that Thunder gave Gigi money for me to have a new bed because he knew I had to be outgrowing the toddler bed. But since Aunt Anne had kept Thunder from seeing my “bedroom” he didn’t know everything. Gigi told me she was keeping it “out of sight, out of mind” from her parents until we could get me a real bed in a real bedroom in a new house. I wasn’t sure what she meant but I trusted Gigi so didn’t make much of it. I was still little even if I was growing so tall people now thought I was an Evanston kid. What I understand in hindsight is I didn’t always have a clue about back then, and I’m glad I had Gigi protecting me.
But present time wasn’t over. Thunder had one more for me before he had to leave to catch the Car Train in Palatka that would take him back to Nashville. He gave me a Vanderbilt t-shirt and something he’d bought from his roommate’s sister who made money as a seamstress … a Little House on the Prairie doll since that was what Gigi was using as my “infrastructure” for my schoolwork. It was an 18” doll but all the clothes it wore were handmade, from her sun bonnet to her little leather shoes.
A little embarrassed he said, “I know you are getting too old for baby dolls, but I figured since you liked the Little House stories so much, and because Josie made sure all of the clothes were modest and stuff, that maybe … you know …”
I ran over and hugged him. “It’s perfect. Just like all the rest of my presents. I promise to take really good care of her. And I’ll really be able to catch fish now. And my new school tablet. And … and Mom’s … her guitar stuff. I’ll be really careful with it. Tell Dad I promise.”
“Tell Dad yourself, Shorty. Though wow, it looks like I’m not going to be able to call you that much longer. I can’t believe how much taller you are just in a couple of months. Dad is going to flip when I tell him. We’ll zoom you in just a couple of days. You can play him some of your Christmas music. Maybe it will make him feel better about being away.”
“I don’t want him to feel bad. I remember when we had to make sure that Christmas and stuff was when we could all be together. And you said … you know … about Dana and all that. We can’t always have everything we want so we appreciate what we do have.”
Thunder pulled my braid and said, “You sure you’re just seven? You’re kinda smart to be seven.”
The look on his face was supposed to make me laugh. So I laughed even though I was sad inside. I learned early that was just the way life was. What was really sad was how often life reminded me of that in the years that came.
Kiwibutterfly
Contributing Member
Thank you
