We had a tree fall on the old garage, and the creek did flood the back field. The phone wires were pulled right off the house, so we had no landline and no DSL for the internet for a whole week! Ronnie had gone off to school, and Lizzie had stayed with us until her father could come to pick her up. We didn’t lose power, so there were DVDs to watch….Liz and I love old movies. Mr. and Mrs. Kemper, the old couple on the next farm over, had problems with their well pump, so we’d drive over every day with plastic jugs filled with water, until their system got fixed. Mrs. Kemper baked such delicious oatmeal lace cookies, and she had made a batch for Lizzie and me. Lizzie asked her for the recipe, and Mrs. Kemper said she’d “have to write it down sometime…” That’s what she’s been telling Aunt Lina for years. She just doesn’t want to give the recipe up – I guess she thinks that if we have it, we might not visit again. I’d still visit – she’s such a sweet lady, and the things that she remembers are so fascinating. When she was a child, a subway ride to Coney Island cost a nickel. She used to sew button holes on men’s suits – by hand! She only made like a dime per buttonhole, so she had to be fast. She’d been a city girl all her life, then met Mr. Kemper at a wedding, and became a farmer’s wife. She loves to talk, and is a good listener, too. I visit as often as I can, and she always has some homemade treat, but those cookies are my favorite.
I told her that we’re gonna move. She just sighed and shook her head. The land actually isn’t Aunt Lina’s; it’s her brother’s. The Kemps liked having us as neighbors; the last family that had lived on our farm wasn’t as friendly. Aunt Lina’s brother Jack hadn’t lived there in years; he lived out west, and rented out the property to young couples or families who needed a place off rez.
So we were supposed to go to NJ this weekend, but between the storm, the floods after Hurricane Irene closing roads, and the holiday weekend, it’s pushed things back a little. So I won’t be starting school when it opens this week in White Cedars. I won’t get registered until later this month. Aunt Lina’s been on the phone with the real estate agent almost every day. I’ve been packing my books and things up, and Aunt Lina’s been packing dishes and stuff. Next week some other cousins will come to help pack up some of her sculpture and paintings to go into storage. Then we’ll put our stuff into a U-Haul truck and they guys will help us cart it all over to the glorious suburbs of New Jersey.
After Lizzie went home, I tried to get Aunt Lina to talk about the move. She was hesitant, but she then she told me that when she’s been out in bear form, she’s scented some strange things in the woods. Things that are telling her to move on. I hate when she gets all “mystical Native American” on me. I’ve seen her do it at gallery openings, when the hoity-toity art collectors started asking stupid questions. I thought it was beneath both of our dignities for her to pull that on me. But there was a kernel of truth in what she was saying – I could see it in her eyes. There was something out there that made her uneasy, and Aunt Lina could usually handle anything. It made me wonder. So I shifted and went out into the woods myself. If there had been anything there, the storm had washed it away, I only smelled the usual animals – bobcat, deer, pheasant, grouse, bear (not Aunt Lina – a wild bear). I thought I scented the trace of another cougar, near a group of boulders that formed a shelter, but it was not a common scent in our area, and it was over a week old; the rain could have affected the odor. It’s not as if I was around cougars often – just at zoos.
So we wait for the joys of suburbia. I am so not going to fit in there—I’ve been reading articles in the magazines Lizzie left me, and if suburban girls are as superficial and insipid as the ones in those articles, I’m going to go insane.
And this waiting is driving me halfway there already! I wish this stupid move was over already!
Until my next post…
Randi
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