Chapters 1-5

CHAPTER 1

2002

My eyelids were so heavy, I felt like I was coming out of the dense fog of anesthesia.  I was awake enough to appreciate the irony, though; I was in the hospital, but I wasn’t the patient.  I was just suffering from debilitating exhaustion, and my body was fighting the urge to rejoin the conscious world around me.   My sluggish state wasn’t just rebellion against the fatigue, or against my grouchy bones complaining of their rusty joints each time I shifted my position; my heart was also desperately trying to deny the despair that was patiently waiting for me to wake up.

                  Despite my attempts to keep lingering in the land of my dreams, my eyes opened to see Joshua lying in the hospital bed, same as I left him when I slipped into my brief slumber just two hours before.  My arm had fallen asleep, and I had to swing it around like dead weight to get it to follow my weary frame to an upright position in the chair that doubled as a “bed” for anyone wanting to stay the night.  I cradled the dead arm in my other good one, and tried to hold it as still as possible.  I knew the pins and needles would be coming when the blood started to flow freely to my arm again.  Any movement would just cause my nerve-endings to go crazy, and if I could minimize that weird pain sensation, I’d be happy.  Well – not happy.  How could I be happy ever again unless Josh opened his eyes and talked to me?

                  He had been this way for two days now, his limbs limp and lifeless, refusing to answer me when I talked to him, pleading for him to respond.  I wanted to join him in his peaceful oblivion, and put away my own aches and bruises.  It seemed my body got sorer as the hours dragged on, the sinews of every muscle group murmuring their objections to any movement. 

I was all at once angry with Josh for ignoring me and scared that he was leaving me.  Tears started their well-known course down my face with that thought, and I tried to bury it deep into the fissures of my broken heart.  If I ignored it, maybe it wouldn’t happen.  Truth be told, if he didn’t open his eyes again, I felt there was nothing in this world worth me seeing.  If he didn’t walk again, then why should I have to take one more step on my own?

                  Hospitals can’t help but corner the market on sorrow and melancholy.  It’s not their fault – it’s just that way.  Kind of like airports – they’re both places where you have to say goodbye.  I mean, they can also be happy places where you welcome people home, but my experiences at airports were mostly saying goodbye to Josh.  I’d sent him off to war more times than I care to remember, not knowing for sure if he’d really come home.  So when he did come home after his deployments, the airport turned into a happy place of joyful reunion.  Would that happen here, too?  Would I get to welcome him back to a full awareness of his surroundings, and would he open those piercing blue eyes and let me see the sparkle of recognition in them when he looks at me again? 

                  At the airport I would always be there, waiting for him to walk off his plane.  My calves ached from standing on my tippy-toes in order to see over the heads of the crowd, searching each face as it came off the jet-way, until that one I recognized as my own came into view.  Then, pure joy.  I’d jump into his arms and wrap myself around him.  His fatigues exuded that unique smell of exotic markets in foreign lands, flooding my memory of days gone by.  If I held on tight, nobody could take him from me ever again.

                  Hospitals have been happy places, too.  It was probably happy in the nursery, because parents were all welcoming a new life into their families, and none of them had any clue that Josh was fighting for his life up here in the ICU.  Right now I couldn’t really remember any happy hospital times – all I could feel is anxiety and panic, hoping against all hope that I wouldn’t have to live my life without my beloved Joshua.  Please, God – let him live.

                  I managed to get my eyes open long enough to look at the machine that monitored his pulse.  I could hear it beeping, but I just needed the double sureness of seeing it with my own eyes, in case I was just imagining the incessant and unbroken procession of beeps in my restless dreaming.  Those patterns of sinusoidal P and T waves, a parenthetical bracket to the beeping spike of the QRS Complex on the heart monitor, were the notes of my lullaby, singing me softly and securely into siesta.

                  A couple of visitors had come by in the past two days.  Only two people were allowed in Josh’s room at once, and even then, visitors to the ICU were tightly controlled.  But these were people who wanted to come by to thank Josh – even if he wasn’t awake to hear their tearful whispers of gratitude.  I wouldn’t leave Josh’s side, so I was there to see each person as they called on him.  They would all do the same thing – pull up a chair to his bedside, take his lifeless hand in theirs, and then the tears would start to come.  They didn’t know what to say, so they would just murmur “thank you” over and over again as they touched their foreheads to Josh’s hand that was clasped tightly in theirs, anointing him with their tears.  As they left the room, they would tell me what a hero Joshua was to them.  I smiled at them as best I could, wondering to myself how I could be the only one who seemed to have been born knowing that about him.  

                  I knew I had to emerge from my cocoon at some point.  My chrysalis was a comforting protection, but it was time to transform from this sheltered existence and face the realities around me.  I owed that much to Josh and to his visitors, so I deliberately shook off my personal shackles of worry and grief for those times when people came to visit. 

In those moments I could certainly feel their emotions and compassion for Josh and me.  In a very real way, I completely empathized with their gratitude for him.  I owed my own life to Josh, and I had spent my own time at his side thanking him for what he had done.  The internal struggle I was having, though, was that I didn’t want to survive without him.  I didn’t want him to leave me here by myself in this world that would be utter desolation and loneliness without him.  So while I was grateful to him for such a selfless act of heroism, I was also reprimanding him for letting me live.  An absurdity to anyone else – but to me, perfect sense.

                  There were still two others that were struggling for their lives down the hall from us.  Not everyone had survived, and perhaps there would be more that would not live.  At that thought, my heart constricted with dread and anxiety – maybe one of those that wouldn’t live would be this kind and tender man lying in front of me.  But the tragedy would have been so much worse if it hadn’t been for my sweet Joshua.  I had to keep reminding myself of this fact, because if it weren’t true, then losing him would be for nothing, and I couldn’t bear to consider that notion – let alone the thought of losing him for the sake of others…even for my sake.

                  If Josh could hear my thoughts, he would be reproving me in his unique way – eyebrows raised, and the right corner of his mouth turned up in the tiniest semblance of a smile.  He wouldn’t want me to begrudge him doing the right thing.  He wouldn’t have changed anything – I was being selfish for wishing he wouldn’t have risked his life in that bitter and icy river, its twisted currents and dark abysses pulling at our feet as we fought and kicked for the surface.  He would have softly scolded me for bidding time backward to undo the events that seemed to have derailed the course of my life. 

I knew I couldn’t change the unchangeable, or wish time in reverse.  And I knew I was being uncharitable in wishing his life for theirs.  I wouldn’t in reality change the outcome, or change his life for any other.  He wouldn’t want it that way, and I knew it wouldn’t be right.  Things happen for a reason, and Josh would probably tell me that this was all part of the plan for his life, and this is what was meant to be.  But I couldn’t help those natural and innate emotions from occasionally surpassing the more spiritual understanding that pierced my soul as I looked upon him.  I knew in my heart, of course, that he had done such a noble and good thing.  I just didn’t want to admit that it might have cost him his life – or should I say, it might have cost me his life.

CHAPTER 2

                  Two days ago Josh and I were driving along the county road, taking our time, not just because the roads were icy, but also because we were enjoying our time together and it didn’t matter to either of us how long it took to get from one place to another.  We were on an actual drive down Memory Lane, on our way to visit the little town we knew so well, but hadn’t seen in quite some time.  We wanted to see the old house where we lived, and take a look at the school to see what had changed since we’d been there last.  My memories were full of poignant images of summer parades, and town festivals at the City Park with contests of every kind throughout the day, and outdoor movies in the park at night.  Pie eating contests and kids chasing around a greased pig, the first to capture it winning $5 – these images were swirling around in my mind as Josh slowed the car, having caught up to a school bus ahead of us on the road.

                  The county road followed the river’s meandering path, and we saw the tail of the bus slip a little each time it rounded a bend.  The red brake lights fluttered and flashed, revealing the nervous hesitation of the bus driver in those slippery conditions.  I wasn’t sure if the driver was new to the area and not used to the winter driving conditions, or if it was just particularly problematic to maneuver the bus that day.  It really was cold outside – the temperature had dropped drastically in just a matter of a day or two.  My nose hairs froze just from inhaling a breath of the wintry air. 

                  The school bus started over a small bridge that spanned the river, and that’s when time seemed to come grinding to a near halt, moving forward by incremental frames of a film that I could replay in my mind’s eye over and over again in the days to come.  The driver hit some ice on the bridge, and the back of the bus slid to the left and kept gliding gracefully like a puck on a hockey rink, nothing to stop it.  The bus driver turned the wheel into the sliding rear end, attempting to correct the movement.  Not even that helped, though, and Josh and I just sat there in our car watching helplessly as the back of the bus hit the guard rail, ripping it from its place on the edge of the bridge.  The point of the bus’s equilibrium was still on the bridge, so it kept turning, coming to 180 degrees from its original bearing and turning still, like a massive yellow ice ballerina, awkward on her skates.  I saw the look of horror and panic on the bus driver’s face, and our eyes locked for just a brief moment before the nose of the bus was carried over the edge of the bridge, only air beneath the front bumper. 

The bus still had some forward momentum, skidding across the bridge as it turned.  But as soon as the front wheels dropped over the side of the concrete, the undercarriage scraped along the hard road surface and shaved the stubbly guardrail off the face of the bridge.  The driver held his eyes on mine as long as he could, craning his neck to see me, powerless to do anything but hold on and pray for the souls he had onboard.  Then he was gone.

The bus careened over the edge of the bridge, and plunged nose-first into the frigid water just twenty feet below.  The water wasn’t exactly shallow in that part the river; it might be two or three people deep, standing on each other’s shoulders.  But even that was deep enough for a bus to be submerged, and for the kids to be in serious danger. 

I couldn’t see the bus from our vantage point anymore, and I was in shock and complete horror – tears flowed automatically from my eyes because my body didn’t know how else to react.  Josh was already springing into action as soon as he put the car into park, and I followed him as the hot breath from our lungs puffed into the cold air.  We were fire-breathing dragons, our vapors trailing after us as we ran to the bridge and looked over.  The rear emergency door of the bus was peering out of the surface of the water like a drowning face reaching its mouth for life-saving air.  Before I knew it, Josh had lunged himself from the bridge into the water below.  Without a thought, I followed.

When I was a teenager at girls’ camp, we would jump into the cold river every morning, and we called it the “Polar Bear Plunge”.  Everyone thought it was so cold, and only the bravest and most daring girls would face the freezing dip in the stream.  Of course I was first in line – anything that took intestinal fortitude drew me in like a bee to honey.  All we got from it was bragging rights – worth every frigid moment.  Girls’ camp was in the summertime, though, so even if the mountain streams were cold with glacial run-off, that ritual in no way prepared me for the paralyzing bone-chilling artic cold that I experienced as I followed Josh into the river. 

                  The shock of the water temperature almost made me lose my breath when I plunged into the river.  I swam toward the light of day, breaking the surface with a forceful splash, and filling my lungs with a shrieking inhale of air.  Josh had already reached the back of the bus, and was working the latch of the back door, pushing it upward and open.  I swam over to him, and he was already climbing into the hatch.  The bus was quickly filling with water, row after row of seats being submerged.  Kids were climbing furiously up the aisle and across the backs of the seats, scrambling for the back door to their salvation.  All I could imagine were rats on the Titanic, trying to outrun the water, scurrying for safety.

The bus was at a sharp angle, and it was hard for them to climb.  I peered over the edge of the door opening and saw one little girl who couldn’t have been more than seven years old holding onto the back of a seat, struggling to climb up the aisle.  Her tennis shoes were slipping on the black grooves of the rubber mat that lined the aisle way, and she stumbled to her knees.  Her panicked almond-shaped eyes found mine; her screaming filled my ears and pierced my heart. 

The shock was starting to set in; I suddenly found myself strangely concerned that these kids would never want to be around water again.  This experience would traumatize them, and they would probably never want to splash in the river like I did when I was their age, diving for treasure, or floating on my back with the warm sun tanning my face.  Time was frozen, like all of my fingers and every muscle on my face.  In that fraction of a minute, I could see my seven-year-old self frolicking in this very river so many summers ago, carefree and happy.  My heart broke to think that this girl looking at me now through her tears may never want to swim again because of this moment.

Time snapped back into motion, and I saw Josh grab the little girl’s hand, pulling her toward the back of the bus, delivering her into my arms.  She clung to me for dear life, her whimpering cries filling my ear, and her petite arms wrapped tightly around my neck.  I looked again at her distinctively almond-shaped eyes and realized suddenly that this girl had Down syndrome.  This altered everything in my muddled mind.  With all the confusion and panic around me, I wasn’t thinking through anything logically; my wit was dimming in the numbing cold along with my extremities.  But this piqued my level of awareness, and brought clarity for just a moment.  My past experience had molded and formed my convictions long ago, and this little girl hit my heart with such force that I almost broke down right there with her in my arms.  The compassion I felt was overwhelming, and the love I had for this unknown child was undeniable, as if God Himself brought me purposely to her. 

I couldn’t fathom the trepidation and turmoil she must have suffered as her bus ride home went so horribly wrong, and I thought my heart would burst with this strange sense of sudden attachment.  Every life in that bus was just as valid and significant as the rest, but for whatever irreconcilable reason, I instantly promised God that I would protect this child as if she were my own.

I murmured in her ear that everything would be ok, and that she was alright now.  “I want my Daddy,” she whimpered.  I prayed silently that I could impart some love and comfort to her - that God would take her fear away.  I looked toward the bank of the river and saw that it was just a short distance from us – maybe just fifteen feet away.  I looked up to the bridge and saw some peering faces standing above us.  “Help!” I screamed.  “Call 9-1-1!  Help us!”

“What’s your name?” I asked, turning back to the little girl.  She just kept crying, though, so I told her I was going to give her a piggy back ride, and that she should hold on to me.  It was like ripping Velcro apart to get her to adjust her position from in front of me to my back, but I finally managed to get her shifted around.  I slid into the river, and paddled toward shore.  Luckily, she hardly weighed anything, and it was easy to swim with her on my back.  We kept our heads above water, and I mindlessly kept moving my arms, hoping they were obeying my commands to stroke, stroke, stroke.  My neck was getting squeezed by her delicate arms – she was a strong little girl for her age, and my windpipe felt like a vacuum hose getting pinched off so that it had hardly any suction. 

We made it to the riverbank, and I breathed freely again as a woman grabbed the little bundle from my back and wrapped a blanket around her that she had brought from her car.  I looked at my sweet little friend, and I saw right away in those exquisite eyes that she didn’t want me to leave her.  I didn’t want to leave her, either, and fresh hot tears fell down my chilly cheeks at having to abandon her here on the bank of the river, even though this kind woman was there to take over.  But I had to help Josh. 

“I’ll be back, ok sweetheart?” I told the little girl.  It hurt me to the bones to have to walk away from her – I cried harder as I turned away and started walking.  The woman told me an ambulance was on its way, but I was already heading back to the bus and I didn’t hear anything else she was saying.

Two more kids had climbed to safety outside, and were huddling together for warmth.  When I poked my head back into the end of the bus, I could see that Josh had positioned more kids toward the back of the bus on top of the seats near the door.  The water had stopped filling the cavity of the school bus, and I saw Josh take a deep breath, and dive back down into the water toward the front, which had been fully submerged for several minutes now.  I could see a little body floating just next to the shell of the rooftop, and I dropped into the water and grabbed his coat, pulling him toward me.  I turned him over, and his face and mouth were blue, his eyes lifeless.  A lump in my throat suddenly grew the size of a boulder.  I tried to cry out loud, and to call for Josh, my lips hardly willing to move and my throat not wanting to give way to sound.  Josh’s head came up out of the water, and when he saw the boy in my arms, he told me to rest his body on one of the seats that was still out of the water’s reach.

“The bus driver’s seat belt is stuck.  I can’t get it unbuckled.” Josh said, and he reached inside his pocket to pull out his knife.  I was just staring at him, mesmerized by the white puffs of water vapor coming out of his mouth every time he breathed.  The scene was surreal, and I wasn’t reacting the way I knew I should.  Instead, I was recalling my dad explaining to me why I could see my breath on cold mornings.  He explained that water vapor would be an invisible gas when it was warm, the molecules moving freely and uninhibited.  But when the air moved from our nice warm bodies out into the cold air, the molecules slowed down and packed together, and could no longer remain invisible gas – rather they turned to a liquid state, and condensed into puffs of air that we could see.  Josh’s puffs of air kept coming short and fast, and he was saying something to me that wasn’t registering.

He took another lung-full of air, and was gone again.  I could hear someone yelling from outside, and I climbed through the back door to see a man with a rope, yelling for me to catch the end as he threw it to me.  I climbed up and held out my arms, hoping I could catch the rope with my lethargic appendages that no longer seemed to belong to my body.  The rope fell short in the water the first time, but on the second throw, it landed near the opening of the door, and I fell against it to keep it from slithering away.

I tried to tie the rope to the bus, threading it around the hinge of the open door.  Tying it in a knot seemed impossible with my uncooperative hands.  I couldn’t feel them; they were so numb, and slow to submit to my commands.  When Josh came up for air again, I tried to talk to him, but my mouth wouldn’t move, and whatever I was saying didn’t make sense even to me.  He pulled the bus driver out of the water with him, and I saw his eyes – the same ones I had seen just minutes before as the bus was sliding on the ice.  But now, those eyes were glassy and fixed open.  He had been trapped in his seat too long, and he was dead. 

The rope was tied crudely, the best I could do with hands that seemed to be just useless clubs with no dexterity left to speak of.  The man on the bank was holding it taut, ready for me to send the kids over to him.  I asked the boys if they thought they could hold onto the rope and pull themselves over to the river bank.  They nodded, and shimmied over to the edge of the bus, held on for their lives, and started pulling their way to safety.  Josh pushed the next girl up out of the doorway, and she followed the boys without a word.  Josh took over from there, and he shepherded the four remaining survivors out from the back seats, and onto the rope.  I sat there shivering, and looked through the back window at the little boy who had been floating on his face just a few minutes ago.  Josh cradled the boy in his arms, and handed him to me through the open door.  I knew in my brain that he was dead, but still, I mechanically tipped his head back, placed my blue lips over his, pinched his nose with my quivering shivering fingers, and tried to breathe air into his little lungs.  More tears streamed down my face, mixing with the icy water that drenched my entire being.

“He’s gone.” Josh said to me.  “You can let him rest, and we’ll be sure to get him back to his mom and dad.”  I looked into Josh’s eyes, my brow lifted high, and then reluctantly laid the boy on the back of the bus. 

The ambulance was here now, and rescuers were starting to get suited up in wetsuits and protective gear.  That’s when we felt the bus shift and give way.  The mass of metal slipped further into the water, completely submersed now, the pockets of air filling with the river’s liquid fingers, reaching into every crevice until she relinquished herself to her watery grave. 

I went under, too, and could see the surface maybe five feet above me.  I let my body droop, unable to move anymore, my energy sapped and my regard for all around me waning by the second.  The current started to carry me, drifting slowly away from the bus.  I stared at the little boy as he floated away from me on the surface, and I hung there in the water, weightless and still. The mass of liquid encased me all about, and I was floating almost as if suspended in outer space, the sounds around me muffled because the river filled my ears, creating an odd sense of peace and quiet, only the sound of my beating heart echoing in my head. 

My body jolted abruptly, realizing a basic need for air, and I kicked toward the surface.  My body was so stiff and my senses so dull, though, that I hardly moved.  I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, and my mind’s eye saw my seven-year-old self at the shallow end of the City Pool, trying to hold my breath for an entire minute.  Those were sixty very long seconds for a little girl, and I was so proud of myself when I made it the entire minute.  But now in the river, I didn’t think I could last even five more seconds, and bubbles from my lungs started seeping from my nose and mouth.  I reached my neck and chin upward, straining for the surface where I knew I would find that glorious air.  I panicked and sluggishly flung my arms and legs, no rival for the endless gallons of water surrounding me.  It was the most horrific feeling I’d ever experienced, and when I realized I was going to die and that I had no choice but to succumb to the liquid enemy enveloping me, I breathed in.

My lungs felt fire, and I choked and coughed, if that’s what it could be called.  After what seemed like eons of time, but was probably just ten seconds, I felt the peace of unconsciousness begin to actually warm my body and overcome my fears.  I was almost to a serene oblivion when I felt a hand grasping my wrist, tugging me upward, jolting me from my near slumber with regular interval.  Pull, glide…pull, glide…and then my mind went mercifully blank.      

                  I found out later, even though I somehow already knew, that it was Josh who saved me.  He was so strong and so skilled – his body kept going so much longer than mine ever could.  And he was brave.  And willing.  And selfless.  He pulled me to the surface and dragged me to the shore.  He breathed the air of life into my lungs over and over again until it forced the water out, and I started breathing again on my own. 

The slow current had carried us lazily downstream a ways, so the rescuers followed the bank, navigating over the rocks and through the bushes until they reached us.  It took them long enough, though, that Josh was barely holding on when they arrived.  We rode to the hospital next to each other, talking only briefly, but holding hands and not wanting to let go.  The longer we drove, the weaker his grip on my hand became, and by the time we made it to the hospital, Josh was unconscious.

CHAPTER 3

                  And that’s how I ended up at this hospital, next to this bed, worrying for this man.  I found out that eight children had been saved because Josh had systematically retrieved every single one of them.  The bus driver’s body was recovered, and so was the little boy who I saw floating away from the bus, having either drowned, or died from the impact of the crash – I wasn’t sure which.  There were two other kids who were suffering from hypothermia, and they were still fighting for recovery in the hospital, too.  Josh was the one who exerted the most energy, who was in the water the longest, and who nobly risked his life over and over again for each of those souls.  His body took the most stress, and now it wasn’t willing to wake up.

                  I sat in the convertible chair, looked over at him and started talking – I heard somewhere that people in comas might still be able to hear things you say.  So I closed my eyes and talked out loud, hoping that the familiar timbres of my voice might spark something in his mind and ignite his senses.  Maybe a small fire of recognition would be warm enough to awaken him from his two-day hiatus.

                  “I don’t know how you were able to find me in that river, Josh.”  I started.  “I thought I was drowning, and then out of nowhere, you grabbed my wrist.”  I ran the scene over in my mind again, imagining if he hadn’t saved me.  I could be dead right now, and maybe I’d be with our mother and father, who had already passed beyond the veil. 

“Did you see that little girl with Down syndrome?”  I continued.  “She broke my heart, and I felt so responsible for her.”  I paused, contemplating.  “I know it sounds crazy, but…I love that little girl.  And I don’t even know her name.”

I sat back to get more comfortable, but I kept talking to him.  “I tried to swim, but my arms just wouldn’t move for me…I was too tired…” My voice started to trail off, and my words became lethargic and slurred.  I was falling asleep, starting to dream that I was still swimming, my arms stalwartly displacing the water, stroke by stroke…

~~~

1978

I parted the sea of cornstalks in front of me with my small hands, making strong breaststrokes as I made my way through the field, row after never-ending row.  The stalks were so tall I was drowning in their waves, and I swam a little faster through their rustling leaves, my lungs starting to feel a small panic of suffocation.  Suddenly I reached the edge of the field and broke free to the surface, gasping great gulps of fresh air in the wide-open space of our farm.

                  Josh and I ran as fast as our bare feet would carry us from the cornfield to the county road.  It had been a dirt road until recently when the county had covered it with a layer of gravel, then poured hot tar all over the small stones before adding a second layer of gravel, forming a pseudo-pavement.  On especially hot days, I would hunt for little pockets of melted tar that expanded with the heated air and formed bubbles on the road surface, and I’d pop them with my finger.  We followed along the edge of the road for a while so our feet wouldn’t get burned on the hot black surface, until we came to our hidden path in the thick of the bushes and saplings lining the shoulder of the road.  The soft dirt path led us through the foliage, each running step leaving a shoeless print, our toes flinging the velvety dust into a brief suspension in the air before falling to the ground on the powdery path behind us.   

We kept running until we came to a steep bank of shale.  The slippery slide of smooth gray rock delivered us to the bottom of the little river valley in a matter of seconds, like a big slide at a water park.  I skimmed on my backside down the hill, a whoop and holler erupting from my throat in sheer glee.  My echoes floated and hung in the air, invisible clouds of sound that filled Josh’s ears as he slid through them after me.  He couldn’t help but join in my cheerful chorus, belting out the best Tarzan yell he could muster.  We’d spend the afternoon damming up the flow of a small side tributary of the river until we made ourselves a nice little swimming hole that we’d jump into, seeing who could make the highest cannonball splash. 

We’d play for hours until we realized the sun was veiling its face behind the lacey leaves of the trees enough to shade our surroundings and make the water too cold for comfort, and we’d head back home to our mother.  Life was so innocent and uncomplicated.  Summer sun bronzed our limbs and bleached our hair.  Mom would send us out for the day with a sack lunch, and wouldn’t worry about us until dinnertime.

I always thought I was lucky for having been born at the beginning of a decade.  It’s always so much easier to calculate my age that way.  No complicated borrowing or carrying of numbers.  My grandma and I shared that fortune; she was born in 1930, and I followed her into this world exactly 40 years later. 

                  My brother, though, was even more fortunate.  Josh was born a mere 13 months before I was, which meant that he was born in the year of the triumphant lunar landing.  It was the year that America won her rightful First Place, edging out the “Commie Russians” in the race to gain the first foothold in space.  All time is now measured by this American achievement.  “That was fifteen years before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.”  Or, “It’s already been a decade since the lunar landing.”  See what I mean?  My brother won on that account – even if it would be harder for him to quickly calculate his age when he got to be older, it seemed all time was measured by the year of his birth.

                  Being the younger one, I would follow Josh around like his shadow.  In my eyes, he could do no wrong.  That summer, he and I had our sights set on a couple of straw cowboy hats that sat on the tippy-top shelf of City Market in the next town over.  We needed some money to buy those glorious cowboy hats, and for the next few months, we set our minds to earning it.  I smiled inside to think that Josh and I would have matching cowboy hats; he never made fun of me once for wanting to be like him, even if I was a skinny little eight-year-old girl. 

He was nice that way, though.  One time when we were walking to school on our first day back for the year, I dropped all my new crayons on the sidewalk.  I was flustered with the other kids walking by, and I started to panic that I would be late to school.  Tears threatened to sting my eyes.  Josh bent down, picked them all up for me and helped each crayon find its rightful home back in the box.  I knew right then that he loved me.

Mom and Dad both taught us to be hard workers – even at our young age.  Some of my earliest memories were following my dad out into the fields early in the morning when the frost was still clinging to the blades of grass, crunching under our feet before the rising sun had time to melt them into submission.  The irrigation ditches ran along the far side of the fields.  Dad would bury the shovel into the ground and pry out a slice of earth that would dam the small ditch enough to divert the life-giving flow of water to the crops. 

I tagged along, watching him work.  My little legs wouldn’t quite stretch far enough to meet my dad’s pace, so I would leap and hop from one big boot print to the next, trailing along behind him as we went.  His shovel would ride on his shoulder, its spade dancing back and forth with the sway of his stride.  I wanted to walk where he walked, not to let my little feet touch unbroken ground, as if the frosty dew was a lake of lava that would swallow me up if I missed my dad’s footsteps.

Josh always wanted to be just like my dad.  He was his carbon copy – not just in his outward appearance, but also his demeanor and personality.  They were both kind-hearted, non-confrontational, and forever the peacemakers.  My dad knew how to do everything; he was so smart and capable.  Later in our lives, after our parents had died, I’d often look at Josh and see the younger version of my dad – the dad of my childhood – and my heart would pull and yearn for those innocent days when I could run and jump into his arms.  When I was just a toddler, he would perch me on his shoulder like I was sitting on a chair, my little legs dangling down to his chest, and his strong hands grasping my ankles.  He would count, “One, two, three!” and I would fearlessly jump out into the open air, my arms stretched out in full faith and confidence.  He’d swing me by my ankles, down to the floor, past his legs, and then like a pendulum swoop me back up to my perch on his shoulders.  I screamed with delight.  

I was more like our mother, not just freckled cheeks and bright blue eyes, but also a less disciplined and more rebellious spirit; we were both full of life and adventure, undaunted by challenges, and loyal to a fault.  My mom was the most stalwart wife and mother I’ve ever known, following my dad around the world, two kids in tow, and enduring what most women would not – dutifully and without much complaint.  I found little wrong with my mother, and if I could just be a portion of who she was, it would be cause for celebration.  She made of our childhood an anthology of matchless and marvelous experiences that I couldn’t have dreamed up on my own given three wishes from a magic lamp.

CHAPTER 4

We had a lone Joshua tree growing on our land.  It was somewhat out of place, and really shouldn’t be growing this far away from the desert.  But there it was, standing with its arms stretched to the sky.

I thought we called it the Joshua tree because it was the place that my brother liked to go to be alone.  He would hang around that tree for hours sometimes, lounging on its branches like a leopard with its prey, or like the silhouette of a cowboy lying down for a nap with his hat tipped over his eyes, his legs outstretched and boots crossed.  He made a platform in the crook of the branches where he could perch himself for quiet contemplation.  He had me climb up the wooden footholds that he had nailed to the trunk of the tree, and help him tie a rope from its branch so we could swing from the platform and drop to our feet miles from its shadow. 

Josh could do most things by himself, but he liked companionship – even if it was just his little sister to watch him while he worked.  It was better than doing it alone.  Even when we were older, he would call me to help him do odd jobs.  I would lend another set of hands to the job to be sure, but I knew in my heart he just wanted my company.  Which, of course, I freely gave.  But sometimes, he just wanted to have time alone in that tree.

 It was a safe place of refuge for him, because it wasn’t exactly built for your typical tree-climbing pastime.  Its leaves could be dangerous; they were shaped like bayonets, flat and tapering to a sharp point.  Clusters of these leaves grew from the branches, and thwarted any invader of Josh’s privacy.  Nobody wanted to hang out in that awkward and prickly tree – except for him.  It was his quiet fortress, and he dwelled there from time to time in his secret place, guarded about by its shadows, his refuge and fortress.

One day I couldn’t find Josh anywhere.  I wanted him to play with me under the trailer house where I had lined up all of our matchbox cars.  Well – they were his matchbox cars, but I was tired of playing with dolls and girly things, and he always shared his cars with me.  We were tiny land moguls, developing small towns and communities in the dirt where our cars and imaginary people could live out their illusory existence. 

We had an elaborate network of roads connecting every part of the community, and even a little river that our cars crossed over on a bridge made from a piece of scrap wood.  We would bring a bucket of water under the trailer, and feign the flow of the river by pouring water into the little canal we had engineered.  As the water ran under the bridge, I pushed a little yellow school bus safely across the rising tide.  It only lasted a moment, though, and then our contrived stream was mud.  We would push our cars over the roadways throughout our town, from our houses to the school, to the grocery store and home again.  It was a glorious way to spend an afternoon, and I went looking for Joshua to see if he would play with me.

“Josh!” I called, as I poked my head into his room.  When I found it empty, I ran out to the barn to see if he might be there.  “Josh, where are you?”  I finally found him sitting out back in his tree. 

“I’ve been looking all over for you.” I said, breathless from running far and wide around the farm. 

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.  I’ve just been up here hangin’ out,” he answered. 

“Well, come play with me,” I petitioned.  “I’ve got all the cars ready under the trailer.”  At that, he threw himself off the edge of his perch, and swung on the rope to the ground.  We raced each other back to the trailer house, and clambered underneath it to our Matchbox make-believe.

I just figured that was what our family called it:  “Joshua’s Tree” – not the Yucca brevifolia, whose common name was given by a group of Mormon pioneers crossing the desert.  The tree’s branches can sometimes look like arms reaching toward heaven, and it reminded them of the Prophet Joshua reaching his arms in prayer and supplication toward heaven.  You can’t tell how old a Joshua tree is, because they don’t have annual growth rings like most trees, but you imagine them as the kings of the desert, towering high above their throngs of adoring high desert brush.

I found out much later that it wasn’t my brother’s tree specifically – although that one tree on our farm was surely his.  “Joshua tree” is just what everyone in the world calls that species.  To me, though, those praying plants of mysterious age will always be my brother’s trees.

CHAPTER 5

                  Our Bishop asked my parents to do their part in the renovation of the church house by committing to a certain monetary contribution.  A large portion of the budget had to come from the congregation, and my parents were happy to do their part.  They had also talked to Josh and me about what we could do for the budget.  So when my dad turned to Josh and said, “Kids, tell the Bishop what you’re willing to commit to,” Josh told him that the two of us would raise fifty dollars.  As we walked out of that office, Josh and I shouldered a heavy burden for two young kids under the age of ten.  My parents had wisely helped us to set a goal that was lofty enough to make it hard to attain, but doable all the same.  Josh and I didn’t know it yet, but we had just become the youngest corn farmers in the county.

                  My parents helped us plant our own little field of corn.  The plan was to raise a crop of sweet corn and sell it door to door to raise our fifty-dollar promise.  Our small bodies bent over the freshly plowed earth, plopping corn seeds here and there, and my mother would follow behind to rescue the wayward seeds.  Our tiny hands covered the hopeful kernels with the dark soil, and our little feet walked down the length of the rows, carefully putting them to sleep until they would take root and finally, after eons of anticipation, sprouts would poke out of the dirt with shyness in the nourishing sun.  Our little hearts soared!

                  Josh called to me every day, luring me outside with his warm and inviting pleas.  I’d run outside to join him, and we’d judiciously inspect the progress of our crop. 

“We’ve got to make sure the corn seeds get enough water,” he said to me, trying to imitate our dad the best he could.  “Water is what gives life to plants.  That, and the sunshine.”  Josh was showing me his botanical expertise; our dad was a Botanist by education, and Josh was parroting something he had heard dad say.

We made sure our little seedlings had enough water running down their furrows from the irrigation ditches, and that all the weeds were cleared from around them, ridding them of any herbal competitors for the soil’s life-giving nutrients.  We witnessed the miracle of seeds giving way to their ultimate fruitful destinies.  After many weeks of what seemed like toil, the stalks were taller than we were, and the ears of corn were plump and sweet.

We loaded our wagon with ears of corn to overflowing, and walked it down the streets of our small town, selling the corn from door to door.  And this is how we eventually raised the fifty dollars that we proudly put into our Bishop’s hand.  What a sense of satisfaction we felt – not just because we saw a result from a hard summer’s work, but more the warm feeling inside from our pledge and promise kept.  We walked home with our empty wagon. 

“High five,” I said.  We clapped hands up top, and then swung our arms down, smacking them together again as they crossed at the bottom, all in one motion.  This was our usual celebratory routine – an “around the world” high-five with one thwack of the hands at the North Pole, and one at the South.   

                  In our free time, we were obsessed with earning money for our cowboy hats that sat patiently waiting for us on that top shelf at City Market.  Our friend, Jude, said that his grandpa would pay us all to pick up nails from his property.  I think there was an old house that burned down on that piece of land, the fire consuming all of the organic material, but leaving all of the metal behind.  His old Gramps lived in a trailer on the land now, but he wanted the nails to be cleaned up.  So the three of us picked up buckets of nails, and Jude’s grandpa paid us one cent for each nail.  We’d find coins under the cushions of the couch sometimes; Gramps’ pockets didn’t always hold his coins very well, and they’d fall into the cracks of the couch to be rescued by us.

                  Jude would play with us a lot, making us the Three Musketeers.  At least that’s how I saw it – most likely the reality of the situation was that they were best pals, and they just let Josh’s little sister tag along.  I kept up with the boys, though – we played some rough tackle football, and I wasn’t the least bit shy about getting hurt.  I played just as rough as the boys did, and I took my bumps and bruises right alongside them.  I’d get the wind knocked out of me, or get slammed to the ground running the football – and the pain, in a strange way, made me feel alive in my young body.  I followed those boys off the rope swing into the river; I rode my bike down scary hills, and took my turn sledding down the biggest slope in town when it snowed.  I wasn’t going to be left behind, and they generously tolerated me most of the time.

∞ ∞ ∞

Josh and I had been playing out in the sage brush on the farm when we uncovered some old pottery shards.  There were ruins of Anasazi Indians in the area, and the pottery we found were the broken remnants and relics of their beautiful handiwork.  We found remains of large white clay pots with black painted geometric designs.  We uncovered big Metate stones that they used with a smaller Mano stone to grind maize.  We were fascinated by the arrowheads and other artifacts we discovered there on our farm, and we collected each and every piece of our dig into our wagon, ready to transport it to the Hogan. 

The Hogan was a small trading post and tourist shop located on the highway that would sell Indian artifacts, jewelry, clothing, and a myriad of other interesting items that tourists would buy.  Mrs. Brimhall was the owner of the Hogan, and the granddaughter of some old-time traders who settled the area.  She wore silver and turquoise jewelry, beautiful against her wrinkled skin and greying hair.  She would pay us cash per pound for our pottery shards.  I envisioned her taking our wagon full of broken pottery, and staying up all night gluing all of the pieces back together again under a desk lamp in the back of her Hogan, the result being a large ancient pot that she would sell in her store.  Little did I know at the time, but Mrs. Brimhall didn’t really have any use for our pottery – she just bought it from us because she loved our little entrepreneurial spirits, and humored us out of the kindness of her heart.    

It took the good part of a day to get our treasure there, make the exchange for cash, and then get ourselves back home again.  Mom made us some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that we carried in the basket on my bike, and we set out down our county road, heading toward the big highway.  Once we got that far, we would cross over to the other side, where we would find the Hogan.

I had a pink Huffy girl’s bike with a banana seat.  Josh’s was brown.  We loved to play Chips – the California Highway Patrol TV show, where one of us would be Ponch, and the other Baker.  Our front wheels would have to be aligned perfectly as we rode our bikes down the county road, and we’d pretend to save people from the distresses of the world.  Sometimes I’d ride on the handlebars of Josh’s bike, if mine had a flat tire, or some other problem that rendered it temporarily useless.  I could pump Josh on my bike, too, even though I was just little – I had strong muscles for a girl my age, and could even beat some boys in arm wrestling.  But most of my strength came from sheer will – the power of the mind over the body.  The very notion that I could be like my brother fueled my abilities and gave me strength to rise up to the challenge with wings as eagles.

I sat on Josh’s handlebars one day, my bare feet buttressed on each side by the large bolt that kept his front wheel attached to the bike frame.  We rode down the street past our grade school, the breeze flowing through our hair, and summer sun kissing our faces.  My foot slipped off the bolt, and my big toe got caught in the spokes.  We wrecked onto the pavement of the street, and Josh picked himself up to help me hobble over to the curb, where I sat to examine the damage.  The thick pad of my big toe was hanging just by a thin flap of skin, and Josh went straight into “rescue boy” mode.  He did this whenever there was an emergency.  He took total control of the situation, and came to the aid of whoever was in distress.  As adults, I teased Josh by referring to him by this term of endearment whenever he transformed into this superhero form.  “Ok, Rescue Boy, I can probably walk on my ankle, but if you insist on carrying me on your back, go ahead.”  Or when he overreacted to a knee injury I sustained while playing women’s intramural flag football in college and yelled for someone to call an ambulance because he was pretty sure I got hit in the head, I said, “Calm down, Rescue Boy.” 

In any case, I learned my lesson about riding on the handle bars without shoes. 

When we were getting ready to go sell our treasure of Indian pottery pieces, we tied a rope from the back of each of our bicycle seats to the handle of the wagon, and we rode slowly and in parallel so that our wagon wouldn’t tip over.  Each of us was pulling some of the weight as we rode our bikes down the county road, forming a giant “V”.

                  We stopped on our way to eat our sandwiches, devouring them like ravenous wolves in seconds, realizing too late that we should have brought something to drink.  Now the thick peanut butter coated the inside of our throats, with no relief in sight until we could beg for a drink from Mrs. Brimhall. 

“Boy, am I glad you two are here!  Where’s your other partner in crime?”  Her eyes were beaming as she saw us walking through the door, its frame knocking into the bell that announced our arrival.  She seemed so delighted to have the pottery, as if she had been waiting for this important delivery from us for days. 

“Oh, Jude had to stay home today,” I explained.  “His dad grounded him because he didn’t come home in time.”  I didn’t say that he had been slapped across the face, too, and Jude didn’t really want to be seen in public with a fat lip and have to make a story up every time someone asked about it.

Mrs. Brimhall weighed the shards, and then paid us for our valuable treasure.  We left her shop, free from our laden wagon, free from our self-engineered yoke of rope, and rode home with money in the pockets of our cut-off jean shorts.  On the way home, my little legs grew weary, so Josh tied the rope between my bike and his, and he pulled me the rest of the way home. 

∞ ∞ ∞

                  Mom drove us to City Market the next day in our station wagon.  We sat on the fold-down bench in the back of the car that faced the rear, the large window rolled down and open to the outside.  We hung our heads out the back window, watching the gray and black asphalt speed past our faces.  We’d climb over the seats, and move around the car as our hearts desired. 

The station wagon was great, but we really loved to ride in the back of our dad’s pickup truck, standing behind the cab, cheeks flattened by the airstream, and mouths shut tight to avoid any bugs from flying into our teeth.  When dad would take us on work trips out into the sage brush country, we’d put down the tailgate and ride with our feet flopping over the edge.  When he was going slowly enough, we’d jump off our perch, hold on to the chain that kept the tailgate at a 90 degree angle, and run as fast as our legs would carry us on the dirt trail until we had the chance to jump back up onto the tailgate.  It was a thrilling game, and part of the reason we were skinny and fit.

There’s a distinct sense of self-determination and even reckless abandon in riding down the highway in the back of a pickup, hands stretched over the cab and bare toes gripping the grooves of the bed.   Even sleeping on the floorboards of the car on a road trip, or holding your baby cousin in your lap on the trip to town – these are things of our past now, only to be found in the Third World, where even more dangerous habits are displayed every day with families of five stacked up on one motorcycle, commuting to school and work.  The dad would be driving, his wife behind him holding the baby, one boy squished in between the adults, and one riding in front of his dad.

It was with this feeling of ultimate freedom that Josh and I were riding in the back of dad’s truck one day, and as we pulled up to someone’s house in town, I was overly anxious to jump out of the bed of the pickup.  I slipped on the side of the bed, and fell right in between the curb and the tire of the truck, still rolling to a stop.  I jumped up, unscathed, and acted like nothing was wrong – no need to get the privilege of riding in the back of the truck taken away for having jumped out too soon and almost gotten myself run over.    

On this day, though, mom pulled into the City Market parking lot in our station wagon, and we jumped out the back window as soon as she parked.  She led us inside where we gleefully made our big purchase.  You didn’t see us for the rest of that summer without those cowboy hats on our heads.  Josh was my best friend, and I tried to keep up with him everywhere he went.  He led the way, and I willingly followed.  Two kids wandering the back fields and rivers, barefoot, grimy and adventurous, sun tanned faces now shaded by straw cowboy hats.  I couldn’t have asked for more.