Mom's Secret Weapon

My cat Dusty - who loved me to pieces just like I loved him - was sent like a guided missile by my Mom every morning to push me OUT of bed. First Mom would yell up the stairs for me to wake up and get up, I'd eventually mumble, " getting up." I lied and Mom knew it. She'd yell again. Then I'd hear her call Dusty and I'd hear him run up the stairs a-thump-a-thump-a-thump...He'd jump on the bed, and come and STAND on me and start making serious biscuits...About that time I would surrender, laugh, pet him and get up.

My Daughter

Eva, as she is today...

My beautiful daughter Eva, who is so beautiful inside and out. I know I probably vex you on a daily basis, but what's new? I am a very vexing person, although I don't mean to be. I love you deeply, am so proud of you, and continue to wish the very best for you in life... 

Compassion, empathy, and love are written on your face. I saw it in you as a little girl, and your capacity for them has only grown as time has passed.

She has Grandpa's Blue Eyes...

My beautiful daughter Eva, who is so beautiful inside and out. I know I probably vex you on a daily basis, but what's new? I am a very vexing person, although I don't mean to be. I love you deeply, am so proud of you, and continue to wish the very best for you in life...

Compassion, empathy, and love are written on your face. I saw them in you as a little girl, and your capacity for them has only grown as time has passed.

A Depth of Grieving

I read this, and I think of my Mother. No person ever grieved more for the person they loved, than my Mother did for my Father. For six years, it was as raw each morning for her, as it was the day he died...

Their Song

You are My Sunshine is a well-known song.

Written by Oliver Hood on a paper sack in 1933 before copyright laws, it was also a song that meant a lot to my parents.  You could call it their special song.




It was so special to them, it became impressed upon me enough to have the chorus lyrics engraved on their grave stones.

It has become a special song to our whole family...

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are grey
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

Dusty: Cat, Friend & Mouser Extraordinaire

Best friends - Dusty & I (circa 1970)

Dusty was a very special friend to me. He came into my life when I was 9 years old, born to a stray (who had adopted our family 2 years earlier) named Smoky. His mother had had 2 litters previous to his, but the tomcat got them all. This time, Dusty was the only one that escaped, because my father was able to hide him in the hayloft before it was too late.

Dusty was spoiled rotten by his mother Smoky, since she could devote herself solely to him. She was a great mother, and we watched with fascination as she eventually started to teach him all about the important hunt. She first brought home her catches and would eat it in front of him, allowing him to sniff and examine. Next, he would try nibbling on a mouse or shrew; he found he rather liked them. Once he got a taste of them, Smoky couldn't keep them coming fast enough! He literally stuffed himself, the little piggy! We would laugh, wondering how many today. I think the record was 5 mice she brought in, and all for her son. Eventually, she started bringing her prey home alive, and would present them to him and we'd see how he would play with them, and not know what to make of them, and then his mother would show him how it - the kill - was done. It was humane, really - cats take a mouse by the neck, make a quick bite, severing the spinal cord (or as my father would say when he witnessed it, the cat would do a coup de grâce...) It was an amazing process to watch over a short time as Dusty was growing up. It's another story, but during this critical time, he lost his mother. But she was there long enough to help him grow up. He never forgot his lessons, and was an amazing mouser the rest of his long life.

Dusty and I hung out a lot.  We slept together, we hunted together, we played together, we took walks together.  He wasn't sure what to make of my horses, but he sometimes played chicken with them!  He was pretty brave, sniffing noses with Sunny a few times, considering how much bigger Sunny was compared to him.  He loved to show off his kills, and would often come trotting out of the pasture or woods, proudly carrying a mouse, vole, shrew, gopher, or other feline delicacy, for us to crow over.  I swear, he looked so proud every time!  We'd pause whatever we were doing, Mom would even come out of the house, and we'd watch with fascination as he went through the cat ritual:  play, torture, play some more, let the prey think they were escaping, then viola, execution!  He would usually eat the head first, which he particularly seemed to enjoy (BRAINS!)  He invariably would leave nothing but...the tail.  Sometimes, even when we weren't there as an audience, we would come home later to find a tail or two on the steps.

Dusty in his (doll) bed, getting ready to go to sleep...

I was very fortunate to be at my parents' home when Dusty passed away.  One night he wanted to go to bed, but couldn't get down the stairs on his own.  He was 18 now, and his arthritis was catching up to him.  I took him downstairs in my arms, and tucked him into the doll bed, his bed for so many years.  In the morning, he wasn't up at the top step rattling the door like usual.  I wasn't immediately alarmed since he had had a hard time getting downstairs the night before, so I went down to help him get back upstairs.  When I got to his bed, he was curled up like he was still sleeping.  But he wasn't sleeping anymore.  His beautiful body was already cold and stiff.  Dusty was gone, having crossed over the Rainbow Bridge.  I cried and cried like a baby that day.  It was the middle of the winter, so he had to be put in the shed until spring to be buried.  Wrapping him up and saying goodbye was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.  But I'm so glad despite the pain, that I was there with him to the end.  Eighteen years is a long time to be a friend to a cat, and I felt privileged to have been a friend to one named Dusty...

Homestead for Sale

Me and my teddy bear out in the yard, circa 1961

I would buy it in a skinny minute, as a retreat for writing, and it would be close to the museum for research. If only I could...

The house I grew up in, the one my grandparents built, is up for sale again. If only I had a spare $100,000  available. It needs a lot of TLC and capital put into it, but I'd find a way to do it if I could. I love that house, I love the land it is on. I love the town it is in. It won't make sense to many others, but it's not just a place. It's my family, my roots, my neighbors, my friends, my history. It's love.

Several people have commented about it, including those that have connections back home, or still live there:

Cleo Bee Jones: I know how you feel, I always wanted to get the land my grandparents farm house had been and built a new house on it and made the rooms bigger and more of them, so all of us 39 grandchildren and families could use it any time...  

Margaret Dykhuis: I agree with you, Trisha. When I drive by the house my father built, I wish for a moment that I still lived there. 

War Wedding 1943

Mom and Dad, the day of their wedding on February 13, 1943

Dad's Birthday, March 14th

Tomorrow, my father would be 93 years old if he was still with us. He made up great stories, loved watching cartoons with me, helped me build a fence, I helped him move an outhouse; through the years he shared his life with me, and when he couldn't, he wrote it down for me to find later after he was gone. Near the end, I helped him walk and take showers, and listened as he shared how it was to slowly lose your body not just to age but to Parkinson's, yet feel the same as when you were young inside. Tomorrow, I will miss Dad, as I miss him and Mom every single day.

Tea Granny

Nothing stopped Grandma from Hanging Clothes!

My grandmother, and all her friends, used to get a kick out of my love of tea. I would insist on my milk in it, as taught to me by Grandma, and of course three sugar-spoon spoonfuls of sugar, mixed just right...then I would ceremoniously and most carefully sip my tea spoon by spoon, blowing on it a wee bit to cool, then slurp it up with gusto. "You're quite the tea granny, Patricia Kaye," Grandma or Toots would say, as I sat at the little table in the kitchen.

It was right by the back door with the frosted glass showing a scene of a hunter with his dog in the woods. Behind that door was the back porch, with the wringer washer and the slop pail. That's where Grandma put all her vegetable and fruit peelings, etc., and it had a complex organic odor that I didn't dislike, but definitely identified as uniquely Grandma's. She would use it on her garden in the spring, mixing it in to help the next batch of vegetables grow. She had a small garden by her outbuildings, a line of small sheds in the back yard, ending with an outhouse.

Looking out the back door was her clothes line, which she used year round, even in the winter. I learned from her that clothes could also 'freeze dry' just like coffee! I even have a photo of her standing in a boat hanging clothes during a flood.

I tell you, nothing could keep my Grandma down. She was a stubborn and persevering Irish woman if there ever was one. Life experience had taught her that if you want something done it's best to do it yourself, that God helps those that helps themselves, and that hard work never hurt anyone.

She had a lovely touch about her that people remembered for years afterward, whether it was because they had stayed at her Fitzpatrick maternity home under her care, or knew her as a town resident and neighbor in another capacity. Her friends could count on her, and she was generous with her hospitality and time. I knew her for far too short a time, and of that for even shorter when she was still in her prime; but I remember enough to have been inspired down through the years by her, and feeling very blessed to have known her, and to have had many days and even nights where I spent them with her and got to see her make many things with her hands - amazing baked goods, knitted mittens, embroidered dish towels, scrumptious meals, or ingenious wheelbarrows made out of what was at hand (including tricycle wheels for the front wheel...).

She had a strong large body, and wore her hair long all her life, always up in a top bun during the day out of the way, but down at night and brushed well before bed. In later years I got to help her brush it out. Only at the end, when she was tired and in the wheelchair, did she allow it to be cut, and even then under protest. I think it was one of her only vanities, being a fairly plain woman. I can surely understand that and not begrudge her. But she was a lovely woman all the same, and I smile to think that Grandpa saw that too, those many years ago when he admired her carpentry handiwork upon meeting her...

A Gentle, Fragile Soul

Years ago I was deeply touched by a film short I saw several times on a local public television station. It was entited "Appearances", in reference to the fact that certain characteres in the film were more concerned with how things looked to others, than in showing compassion to those they were responsible for...

Fast Forward about a decade or so. I'm reminded of it somehow, and decide to finally track down the person or persons who put it all together. I finally identify and locate him, writing him a letter....

You ask for a bit more about why it touched me...Many reasons, I guess. I was brought up in a small village in the 1960's and 1970's with a lot of supportive people in my life. I was exposed early to people of all ages, but especially older people. My own grandmother lived down the road, then later with us. I helped play piano and serve communion at nursing homes with my church. I saw on the one hand how people said you should respect your elders but on the other hand many didn't - they were discounted or ignored. My experience was that they were interesting people. In college I visited nursing homes and talked with older people coming away fascinated by their life experiences, realizing once again that the body is simply a shell, but that many cannot get beyond it to see the person.

My father had a younger brother who was mentally fragile, mostly due to environmental reasons (meaning home environment in this instance). My Uncle Grant eventually became unstable enough that he no longer could live on his own. From the stories I heard, from the denigration of his spirit and self-esteem he experienced from his father, he definitely came to mind when I saw your film. I saw it for a wider context, yes, but we all tend to personalize. Some people react to such emotional abuse by getting angry, while other quiet souls retreat as he did.

I think your choice of hard transition, no faces, anchoring the feelings of freedom with the artistic expression of the child with the music refrains, was powerful. It's funny how some things burn into your mind, but "Appearances" definitely did for me...

I try to remember to be compassionate to people, but I admit there are times when thoughtless words come out of my mouth. I am reminded by certain things that cross my life - Christ's words, your film - and I am reminded again, rebuked, and humbled. That is a good thing...

"I have a heart for the physically/mentally disadvantaged...my film pays homage to 'The Elephant Man' and also tries to bring about a new way of looking at persons with disabilities."

- Torry Nordling, producer/director of Appearances