True Stories Well Told

Bang, bang, bang, tap, tap, tap

“Hey guys, Mom is making something.”

We race for the stairs to the basement.

“What are you making, Mom?”

“Be patient.” She has large Maxwell House coffee cans on their sides and is putting a hole in the sides with a nail and a hammer. She strings a wire through the holes and leaves a loop. “There, now we have berry picking pails.”

We kids grab the pails and head out. With thoughts of pies in our heads, we take the path along the slough. There, the huckleberry bushes grow in abundance. This is the spot we found last year when Mom showed us how to pick huckleberries. She grabbed a limb loaded with berries and stripped it off into her hands. The sound of the ping, pinging of the berries filling our pails soon dims as the pails fill. The younger ones stuff their mouths with handfuls of sweet ripe berries, but we older ones know huckleberry pies are on the horizon.

On this hot summer day we head for the slough. We place our brimming pails on the path, take off our shoes, roll up our pants and wade out into the mud flats. The tide is out. The cool mud seeps between our toes. Our feet make a sucking sound as we pull them out. “Hey, stop that,” as a blob of mud hits me. I grab a handful and throw it at my brother. He tries to get out of the way, but he can’t jump because his feet are stuck in the mud. We are sitting ducks. Everyone is a target.

Back home we hose off each other. Showing Mom our full pails, “Dump them into the water in the sink.” The green berries and leaves float to the top and Mom skims off these. Huckleberry pies for dinner tonight!

Left to right: Henry, Mom with Baby Frank, Carl (in front), Dad with Conrad, Jan (in front), Tommy (in back), and me with our dog.

Just before school starts in late August, Mom calls out to us. “Go get your berry pails; we are going to pick blackberries, so I can make jelly.” Mom’s blackberry jelly is legendary.

Mom pulls a long plank out of the garage and tells the older boys to bring it. The youngest is in a baby buggy. The rest of us go behind her single file along the county road to her secret place. She holds the plank up on its end next to the black berry patch and lets the plank fall into the middle of the patch. She steps up on the plank jumping up and down as she walks along to the end.   “Okay, come on carefully and line up on the plank.” We take turns standing guard over the baby and walking out on the plank. We feel like pirates. It’s scary out on the plank, but thoughts of Mom’s jelly turn our minds to filling our pails.

“Everybody off.” Slowly we back off the plank. Mom pulls the plank out. We move further along the patch. She repeats the process. With our pails full we head home. That night she surprises us with blackberry cobbler for dessert. “But, Mom, will there still be enough berries for your jelly?” She smiles.

Several days later we kids are walking along the county road to visit Dad. He is working at the boat shop a mile from our house. There are large puddles alongside of the road with pollywogs just beginning to form their hind legs. We need to catch them, but they slip through our fingers. “Hey, somebody run home and bring our berry picking pails,” shouts my older brother. I run back to the house. We figure out how to hold the pail just so, so the water slides into the pail bringing the pollywogs with it. Our pails filled with, soon to be frogs, we run home with water sloshing against our legs. The pails are lined in a row on Dad’s workbench. We check them daily, but two days later we discover that our ducks have made a nest and laid eggs. Pollywogs forgotten, we watch the nest each day.

“What’s this mess?” We hear Dad holler out. We run to the basement. On his bench the five rusty berry pails are reeking with dead pollywogs. Wide-eyed we look at each other and race back upstairs.

© Suzy Beal

Suzy Beal, an occasional contributor to True Stories Well Told, has been writing her life story and personal essays for years. In 2016 started studying with Sheila Bender at writingitreal.com.  “She has given me the courage to begin to submit pieces for publication,” says Suzy. “I’m 72 years old and live in Bend, Oregon.  I was born on the Oregon Coast in Newport.  In 1961 when I was a teenager my parents took all seven of us siblings to live in Spain on the island of Mallorca.  There my dad and brothers built a sailing boat onto which we moved and sailed the Mediterranean.  We later moved to the Caribbean and lived and sailed from St. Croix.”

By Ruchi Kahan

Ruchi entering the orphanage, and today

In the hardest time of my life, when I almost died, my spirituality saved me.

I lived on the streets of New Delhi, India, trying to survive alone starting when I was only four years old. I remember seeing a lot of other people who were homeless, adults shouting at their kids, and huge stacked-up piles of garbage. The cows were also in the garbage looking for food. I was looking for survival. It was an instinct, the only way I could continue.

I remember that everything tasted rotten. Food lost its deliciousness. It was like after someone ate something delicious, they threw away the corpse of their food to wither away. That’s what I was eating.

A lot of people that I saw worshiped the ground they stood on. They took the sand from their homes when they left and put it on their foreheads. I tried to learn from them. I put the sand I found on the streets on my forehead.

When I was six I got captured by the police and sent to an orphanage, the Welfare Home for Children.

I was first taken to the basement. There was a lady down there who made a report about me. The basement was really dark except for the light of her room, and that was really dim. After that, a woman came to get me, who ended up being always with me. She was part of a group of women who took care of us. We called them our Aunties.

During that time I became someone who didn’t see hope or light in my life anymore. My spirit was always strong though, and nothing could extinguish it. I would hear the auntie/caretaker tell tales about gods and goddesses in Hinduism. She regaled us with stories about how God Vishnu, the preserver and protector of the universe, created the other two worlds as represented by Shiva the destroyer, and Brahma the creator of the universe.

Brahma was the god with three heads who sat on a lotus. Shiva had a snake around his neck and would stay on the snowy mountains with his goddess, Parvati, and his son, Ganesha.

The best-known tale the auntie would tell came from the Ramayan, “Vishnu had taken an incarnation as Lord Ram. Laxmi had taken on an incarnation as Sita, Ram’s wife. Lord Ram came to free the Earth from the power of the demons.”

I was so in love with all the tales that were told of Hinduism. We were taught to believe in reincarnation, which means when we die we would be reborn on this earth as someone new, forgetting our old selves. But a glimpse of our old selves will show in our new selves.

When I heard those tales and felt so proud of my culture, my spirit blazed bigger and farther inside me. A glimmer of hope came back.

There would be special holidays to worship the gods and goddess such as Holi, the festival of colors, and Diwali, the festival of lights. Diwali is still my favorite holiday because the houses and streets would be would be lit like a Christmas tree. There would also be presents and fireworks!

Even though I lived in an orphanage some of us were chosen to participate in the festivities. They would pick names randomly out of a box. But first, they took out the names of the kids who were doing badly at the orphanage, either doing bad things or not doing well in school. If you did bad, you could not be chosen to leave and celebrate the holiday.

I got chosen once and I loved it. A lot of kids kept telling me the trip was an opportunity to run away and leave the orphanage. But I didn’t try because I had a hard life on the streets and I could have easily gotten an illness on the street. At least here I had a shelter, a place to live for the time being, a place where I was cared for so I could carry on. I was choosing between horrible and the brink of horrible.

Time after time I would get recurring visions of gods and goddesses inspiring me to be a good person and put everything into whatever I’ve committed to. God Vishnu also gives me the knowledge to see gods or goddesses in every person. Hinduism has a special greeting called “namaste,” which means “the divine in me bows to the divine in you.” All the holidays for the gods and goddesses make me proud and devoted to my culture and religion.

One lesson I learned from Hinduism is this: When anyone you love dies and you pray to your gods to not let them leave this world, don’t blame them if your loved ones go away. Just remember, even though they left their bodies, their spirits will always be lingering around you. They will watch over you from wherever they are. They will be born again to meet up with you in their next life, for you will never be separated from them.

After two years I was taken from the orphanage to a new home in America. I am now becoming someone who believes in the very essence of life. Because of this experience, I became devoted to my culture and life.

© 2018 Ruchi Kahan

Ruchi is a student in the Washington, DC, area. This essay began as a class assignment on Identity. Ruchi wants to become a veterinarian. She loves all kinds of animals, especially horses, wolves, cats, and dogs. This year she plans to visit India with her American family.

By Suzy Beal

“Give it back to me! I won’t burn myself, I know how to do it.”

“Mildred, let me do this for you.

“No, give it to me, NOW”

Her gnarled fingers are gripping the curling iron so tightly I can’t get back control of it, short of prying off her fingers.

“OK, I will give it back to you so you can do the front, but you must let me to the back.” We reach a compromise, but she refuses to give it back to me even though she is finished curling her front bangs and sides. Her jaw is set, her eyes challenging me. I see in them the new bride in 1942 standing on the docks in New York City waving good-bye to her husband as he goes off to war in Europe.

The phone rings and I pick it up. “Mildred, your son is on the phone.” She has to let go of the curling iron if she wants to take the phone. Indecision races across her face – she will lose control of one more thing if she gives up the curling iron, but she wants to hear her son’s voice. Her eyes tighten and she squints at me and I see the young pregnant mother leaving with three small children her family and friends to cross the country by train to join her husband as they begin a new life together on the Oregon coast. She chooses the phone. I unplug the curling iron and put it out of sight. I feel like a traitor.

At seventy-one, am I watching my future unfolding? Mildred is a friend I have been visiting every week for two years at her assisted-care facility.   This past week she was moved from her assisted-living home to a transitional care facility because she appears to have lost the use of her left leg. Since I’m not family, I’ve not been given the details of her diagnosis. However, I can tell she is unhappy to be here and she is taking out her anger on me today. Only two weeks ago we were stringing beads and making necklaces in her “home.” Now she has lost so much, she is struggling.

Our battle is over for now, but I feel as though there is so much more at stake here. I can see her standing on the bluff over- looking the Pacific Ocean for the first time, terrified of it and the sound it makes. At ninety-seven she can curl her own hair, after all she raised five children helping each one reach a successful and meaningful life. Each day she loses something important to her. She has a smile, when she uses it, that melts the heart, but if she feels that she is being crossed or talked down to, the smile disappears and she clinches her teeth tightly together and just like her gnarled fingers holding onto the curling iron, there is no opening her up, unless I hand her a chocolate.

She is so much more than this old lady tied to her wheelchair. She has the right to be angry, unhappy and sad that her current situation prohibits her from any choices. Her choices have been taken away along with her freedom, but most days she has a smile for me when I show up and when she clutches my hand I know that that strength comes from her heart.

© Suzy Beal

Suzy Beal has been writing her life story and personal essays for years, but in 2016 started studying with Sheila Bender at writingitreal.com.  “She has given me the courage to begin to submit pieces for publication,” says Suzy. “I’m 72 years old and live in Bend, Oregon.  I was born on the Oregon Coast in Newport.  In 1961 when I was a teenager my parents took all seven of us siblings to live in Spain on the island of Mallorca.  There my dad and brothers built a sailing boat onto which we moved and sailed the Mediterranean.  We later moved to the Caribbean and lived and sailed from St. Croix.”

Dorothy Ross, whose writing has appeared on True Stories Well Told before, sent me this story to accompany her recent essay, “My First Car.”

In 1987 my husband found a new-used Mercedes diesel station wagon for sale and convinced me that it would be a good car for me to drive on the California freeways—safe and solid. I had buyer’s remorse almost immediately. I didn’t like searching for stations that sold diesel—they were mostly truck stops—and I hated pumping that smelly, oily fuel. And then there was the noisy chug-chug of the diesel engine that made me feel like I was driving a truck.

I just didn’t see myself as a Mercedes type of driver. Too showy and too foreign. In the lace curtain Irish neighborhood in the Bronx where I grew up, folks drove Detroit cars like Ford and Chevy, not high-end German autobahn vehicles. If I showed up behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz, they’d laugh me off the block.

But the wagon was bought and paid for so I drove it—for more than thirty years and over 300,000 miles. Because we’ve lived in the same town all those years, I’ve come to be associated with my car. When my friends see the old burgundy Benz in the parking lot at the library, they know they’ll find me in the stacks.

I can’t say when I learned to love my unique and reliable wagon, but I did. And it turned out Bill was right. When I drove around Northern California in my red wagon, I felt like I was riding in a tank—safe and secure. I drove it up to Seattle to visit a friend, and down to Tucson to see my cousin. Somewhere along the way I started calling my car Betsy. Bill and I often return to the car and find notes on the windshield from people offering to buy the classic wagon.

When our granddaughter turned sixteen, we gave her the Benz because we wanted her to drive an armored car on the highways with the big trucks and SUVs whizzing by. Elly thanked us without any real enthusiasm. She hated the bulbous wagon as much as I had when it was new to me. And I wasn’t too happy with the fancy car we bought to replace it. So her parents let her choose her own car, and I got Betsy back in my garage.

We still own the car, and though I no longer drive due to health concerns, I’ve been having a hard time parting with the old girl. But guess what? Elly has had a change of heart regarding the red wagon. Ten years after turning it down as a teenager, she and her husband would like to have the Mercedes for running around town and taking their dog to the beach. I’m happy to report that we’ll be keeping Betsy in the family.

© 2017 Dorothy Ross

Dorothy is a native New Yorker who worked on Madison Avenue before moving west in 1961. On the Davis campus of the University of California she served as an editor and program director. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2007, she often writes about the challenges of living with that condition.