The Wall

Elle, the third and middle child, did not know any of her sisters were in the garden with her. She came to a stone wall in the exotic place. Light from the other side of the wall glowed and pulsated, and she was drawn to it. She tried to climb over the wall ... but was repulsed by an invisible force. She tried to go around it ... but she could not find the end of the wall. Finally she found a strange looking, almost invisible key lying in the leaves and moss.

The key was made of crystal! She turned it over in her hand, and it sparkled and glowed. Maybe there was a way to use the key to get to the other side of the wall! She started to examine the wall a bit more closely. Time seemed to drift away as she looked at each stone. Each one was individual of course, and each one seemed to have a story embedded in it.

There were many stories, about kings and queens, fauns, centaurs, gods, fools .... but nothing about a crystal key, and no stone had a place to insert the key. She grew tired and sat down with her back to the wall to rest. Her eyelids drooped and things looked more and more blurry. What was that coming toward her through the garden? A white horse .... she opened her eyes, and it disappeared!

Slowly sleep claimed her consciousness and the white horse came for her again. This time she mounted it, with the key in her hand. The horse circled, in a gentle canter. When he came back to the wall, he leapt over it as if the stone wall were nothing but a twig in his path.

entering

by the time the youngest of the group peered through the gateway, she saw the dare-devil middle child way deep into a most unusual place, with glowing birds perched on her head and shoulders, cobalt blue puffs of light floating in the air as if hoovering to see this new girl-creature that dared to enter. there was a soft golden light illuminating the middle one's way and to this day, the youngest swears she saw her levitate at least two feet above the ground.
the youngest felt immense confusion which way to go. she looked at her beloved other's continuing on the path, but it held the memory of the dark time, such saddness. she saw the middle in full color paradise, but it was unknown, different. looking back and forth, her loyalties were torn: go the wisdom way of the elder or enter the new, exciting world of wonder. then what appeared before her was of such breathtaking beauty that there was no more doubt...enter she must, and the new world now engulfed two out of the five.

Middle Child Syndrome

The middle child, not paying attention to the group at all, stared into the doorway. She saw adventure there! Leaving the group, she plunged into the unknown beyond the door, leaving it open behind her.

The light inside was completely different from the gray skies outside. The sun shone on beautiful exotic plants and shy gentle creatures that peered at her from behind huge glossy dark green leaves. Birds sang songs she had never heard before and coaxed her farther in, moment by moment, farther from the doorway.

red waggin' tail

The oldest, of the five children, was curious and peeked into the deep dark doorway. Quickly she pulled back, successfully freed the wagon wheel, and then trudged on because her job was to get these little ones home. The next in line was the second born. Her bright yellow curly hair caught on the brambles that surrounded the entrance.

red wagon continues...

no one had prepared them for what had occurred and they were to small to know what to do. with eyes down cast, they walked on, not knowing where they were going, not even caring anymore. so deep within sorrow, they almost passed the half hidden entrance altogether! the wheel of the wagon caught in a rut and spilled the ragged toys right there in front of the secret door.

Red Wagon

A weeping little girl pulled the wagon which was full of her ragged toys. She walked slowly along the street, sighing and occasionally wiping her nose on her sleeve. The others walked along with her, heads down.

Fantasy Collaboration

The rules of this are simple:
- Post the next two or three paragraphs in this story.
- Every post has to be coherent with the last post.
- Please, no posting anything that is not story
- Keep it clean, er...well, you can try.
- Remember, the genre is fantasy.
I'll start:

Once upon a time there was a little red wagon.

Otter Lake slumber

Dad asleep on the porch.

A Second Life for Mom

I guess the blog has brought Mom back to life after all! Here she is at my gallery in Second Life!

Nana in her usual blue and black patterned silk dress, possibly at Otter Lake.

Tribes of Wisconsin

This map is from a site on Wisconsin Indian Tribes that is very informative. There were more tribes in the area, for example the Sauk and Fox in southern Wisconsin. The Menominee were very important in our area, as were the Oneidas and Stockbridge.

For the most part the tribes in Wisconsin lived peacefully side by side with the European newcomers. The Menominee were a very large tribe that are now a sovereign nation within the borders of Wisconsin. Read their history here. The reservation became a county, then went back to being a reservation. The land and waters of the Menominee are beautiful and clean.

natural innocence...

otter lake was a beauty in the land of a thousand lakes. the entire area for miles was untouched forest being perched next to the wisconsin national forest. it had a potent infusion of magic in it's aura, perhaps having been the home of creatures now extinct or nearly so. the first humans were of course Indians. they knew how to listen to the winds, brave the subzero winters, hunt, fish, make clothing from hides, homes from skin and weaving.

nana told us stories about going into the "modernized" kitchen in the log cabin to cook breakfast on the wood burning, cast iron stove to find a seated group of Chippewa and Wabeno tribe's members wanting to trade beaded moccasins and tobacco pouches for ground flour, cornmeal and lard. nana acquired many "toys" from them: miniature birch tee pees and canoes; a ceremonial drum painted blue with images of leaping deer, the parameter of which was rimmed with white spotted red fawn fur (we sang our little girl songs to the beat of this exquisite drum); a buck skin dress for a young woman; a thick birch skin basket or purse with dangling acorns. someone said these things were donated to the Neville Public Museum.

these gifts from a different century held a tactile memory, a gentle power of nature and seeped into one's being. i cannot imagine this coming from someone's cell phone or computer. maybe i'm just sentimental...but even the smallest patch of moss reflected the Mystery...what we call fractal intelligence.

i had a dream of otter lake after it had been sold. the dream showed me where the new cottages were built and how the otter was disturbed. later i told our father this dream and was shocked to hear how exact my night vision was. he brought out the blue print where all the lots had been sold. yup...heartbreakingly true. this is only a small inkling of what the Indians must have felt.

swing at otter lake

one september afternoon in 1956, botz swinging in the soft sunshine with otter lake in the background. dig those shoes.

Otter Lake

This log cabin was built by our great-grandfather, Big Mike Quinlan, if I remember correctly. He was a logger and this was their main logging camp. It was referred to as Camp Comfort. Nana inherited it from him and she added more comfort ... an indoor toilet, for instance. She had a pre-fab bunkhouse built behind the cabin, where I spent some time with my cousin Nina exchanging our knowledge of sex when I was 12 (my knowledge was VERY limited).

Nana willed the cabin and land to her four children, of whom only three were interested in spending the money to keep it up and to pay the taxes on it. Lou-Lou sold her share to the other three. Then I am not entirely sure who dropped out, I think maybe Uncle Bill, and there were two.

However, those two had many children between them. Ten, if memory serves. The property could not be willed to ten children and thence to their heirs, and the costs of upkeep and taxes were high, so finally Mom and Uncle David sold the property.

We, as Mom's children, were given some money each from the sale of the cabin. I remember talking to an Indian (I do not use the term Native American, since technically, I am a native American myself) about the money. I said how ironic it was that this land which had belonged to his people had then been appropriated and utilized and then it became this cash in my hand. I felt a bit odd, like the money should properly belong to the people who had been there originally, but I spent it anyway!

Dad's Birthday

Today Dad would have been 98 years old. As Botz has said, he loved having his birthday next door to the Fourth of July and all the fireworks. His cousin Tom had his birthday on the 4th, I believe, so they were cousin-twins.

Every year, our sister #2 would bring an M-80 (like a cherry bomb, but a little bigger bang) for Dad to light and throw in the back yard. Every year, he held it a little longer, building up the suspense and terrifying everyone in the area. We were always wondering if this was the year we would have to call the ambulance to take him to the emergency room. But he always threw it just in time. He became deaf gradually, year by year, and I wonder if those little exploding fireworks added to it! If they did, I am sure he did not care one bit. Oh the thrill of it all!

Dad loved life and considered every day a gift. He ate every meal with tremendous enjoyment, and savored everything good in life. I think growing up relatively poor made him very appreciative of anything he experienced that was on the good side of the ledger.

being bob

our father's birthday was the third of july, so naturally as a little boy, he assumed that all the fireworks and sparklers were an extension of his celebration. so did we when we were children at otter lake, firing off roman candles and watching their trajectory over the lake. we lit those flat grey disks and watched them grow into thick ash smokey snake squiggles, held sparklers close to our little faces or drew fire line images in the air like an abstract artist painting wildly. then of course we would eat cake (later it had more candles than cake).
this is the time of year we would gather at 918 year after year.
we always made a big deal about his b-day, adoring him. how he loved life. you could feel his goodness inside his being.

na na

our beautiful nana...

stern wheeler

na na's throne was where ever she sat basically, being a commanding figure of a woman. when she was positioned at the dining room table, opposite dad, the power focus shifted to her end. she would be in her perpetual black silk dress with sequined bodice or collar (her drawer was chuck full of removable black sequined collars with barely noticeable changes in pattern). she would pinch the thighs of the child nearest when we were not using victorian etiquette, which resulted in black & blue thighs for rDs and enjah. so we snickered and suppressed giggles when she would mistakenly fork the painted flowers on the spode plates thinking it was a new potato or tasty bits of roast beef or a tiny irritating slippery little pea. her silverware clinking the surface of the plate, lifting an empty fork to mouth...hehehehe. after dinner she would throne herself in the winged back armchair and with ribald humour murmur, "i could blow a hole in this chair!". she looked like she could.

where ever nana sat, that spot became the commanding post. as stern wheeler, she had a chair nailed onto the row boat and would sit like royalty quietly reading as her sons, mostly david, rowed her on our beloved otter lake, donning a fedora.

to be fair, nana had a very soft and lovable side. giving birth to eight children and being married to a much to dapper irishman, she had to get tough. but in her later years she was endearing, poking roasted chickens, making us sugar sandwiches: take single slice of white bread, pour white sugar onto thick layer of wisconsin butter, fold over and eat like you are grinding sweet ocean sand...goosebumps!

i loved to stroke her black seal skin winter coat while we were in church or slip my hands into the mink muff with silk lining (it had a secret zippered pocket inside to put...what? lipstick?) that was probably used when she was young while ice skating or taking a romantic walk on a chilly northern night.

nana's later years were relaxed as she was in decompressing mode, enjoying the queenly service she had earned. she anchored in an entirely different century for us, with stories of the Chippewa Indians, the otter, the whippoorwill and fireflies. she gave us otter lake. and THAT is another story.

na na died one hot summer night in 1962. the air was heavy as rDs and i sat on the front lawn from where we could see the hospital a few blocks away. we counted the number of lights on the 6th floor, four from the right and stared at that little white square, knowing we would never see our na na again. and as we all know, all nana's must return to nature.

Nana (pronounced NAH-nah)

Nana, our maternal grandmother, lived on Monroe Street the earliest I remember, in a long narrow Victorian house that was split into an upper and lower duplex. The upstairs apartment was occupied by a burly cheerful nurse who had auburn hair (or maybe I am making that up). The house was painted blue grey with white trim and was on a corner.

Auntie Ed lived on that same street, but in her own house. She had never married. On Sundays she and Nana would come to our house for Sunday dinner sometimes.

Nana loved sugar ... she even sugared her "orange drink", a concoction that was delivered by the milkman, manufactured from orange juice, water and sugar. It was delicious, but not nearly sweet enough for Nana, apparently. She would sugar her apple pie! She also loved her mashed potatoes.

After that Monroe duplex, I believe Nana moved into an apartment over near Astor Park, in a dim place I barely recall. She had a different exchange from us! She went from having a HEmlock number to having an EDison number (oh what an exotic exchange!). After that, she moved to a very large square (and very unattractive) house on Monroe, but closer to our house.

Finally she moved to Jackson Street, just a block away from our house. Once again, she was in a narrow tall Victorian, white this time. She grew tomatoes along the picket fence. She had her Mogen David and Maryknoll magazines on her round table, and a portrait of some unidentified woman on the wall, who looked vaguely like Aunt Lou-Lou.

Although with us she was very gentle and kind, Nana was a force to be reckoned with. I heard the stories of how she never spoke to this one or that one, ever since they ....

She was round and soft, like a potato roll, with twinkling blue eyes. Her hair had been very long, and she wore it in a coronet of braid around the crown of her head. Then some year or other, she had it cut off and wore her hair in a soft white halo around her head. She wore silk dresses that all blur into one in my memory, mid-calf length, belted loosely, with those old lady shoes ... Enna Jetticks, I think they were called, black laced-up oxfords with thick high heels. When she sat she crossed her ankles, and we could see how swollen they always were.

At our house she would request a "Pink Lady", which was a pretty soft pink drink with gin in it.