The Known Universe

By Laurie Kay Olson

Copyright ©2012 by Laurie Kay Olson

It is amazing some of the things you remember from childhood.

Mom and I sat on the back steps not long after the rain had stopped. She was helping me learn how to hold my fingers for the number three because when someone asks how old I was I would still hold up two fingers. My little fingers were struggling to learn the new position. She would show me with her fingers and then help me get my fingers into the right configuration.

“Free!” I exclaimed, holding up my hand. Two fingers were fully upright, but the third was still cramped over a bit. Mom had stopped paying attention to the task at hand. She was looking up and away.

“See the rainbow, Lilly?” she asked, but she didn’t turn back to me. “Isn’t it pretty?”

I looked up in the direction she was looking. I couldn’t see a bow. There was nothing out of the ordinary that I could tell.

“See, it is right up there!” Mom encouraged. She pointed up.

My eyes scanned the known universe. I still couldn’t see a bow.

“It has such pretty colors,” she said, pointing. Whatever she was seeing was making her happy. I wanted to see it too.

I scrunched my face in concentration. I kept looking for the bow. Was it tied to the telephone pole? Was it on one of the power lines? Perhaps tied on one of the branches in the hedge? I still couldn’t see it.

“Oh, look, now it is a double!” cried Mom enthusiastically.

I looked up at her questioningly. What was it that she could see that I couldn’t. Adults were strange creatures for sure.

“That means that there are two of them now,” Mom explained.

I turned my face upward again. Again I scanned the telephone poles, power lines, trees and hedges. Not a ribbon tied to anything that I could see.

“Can’t see it!” I was almost in tears with frustration.

Mom tried again, demonstrating with a wide sweep of her arm. I sidled closer to her and tried to look again. I still saw nothing. I wanted to see what she saw. I wanted to see the pretty ribbon tied in a bow, and now there were two of them and I still couldn’t see them. Unlike Daddy, Mommy was not one to tease me. If she said she saw something, then she saw something.

I strained to see what it was she was trying to show me, but it was no good. There were no ribbons tied to anything. It was time for a different tact – change the subject.

“Free!” I told her, holding up my fingers. This time all three were a little cramped, but it was the right number.

I didn’t completely understand the memory that stayed with me over the years. Obviously, I had misunderstood what a rainbow was, but I had not been able to see any pretty thing out there. Then one day, years later, my husband and I were lying in bed one morning with our daughter, Annie, tucked warmly between us. All of a sudden her hand shot out from under the covers and pointed up at the ceiling..

“Oh, look, there is a little wall up there!” she exclaimed in epiphany.

I also had an epiphany at that moment. That I had misunderstood what a rainbow was was not the only reason I had not been able to see it. It, like the ceiling, had existed outside of my known universe at that moment. I also realized that there was an awful lot that Annie could teach me. I committed myself in that moment to being a good student. I wanted to see all the rainbows she had to share and help to expand her known universe.

Snow Business

Copyright ©2012 by Laurie Kay Olson

Colorado was a beautiful place, thought Shirley, but she ached for Minnesota in her heart. The summer had been so dry that her skin had been parched with the dryness. Autumn was gorgeous with quaking aspen trees, but hardly the lakes and forests of home. The year 1953 was starting to draw toward its close. Finally, at long last, it was snowing! A white Thanksgiving was on the way.

Life as a newlywed never seemed to live up to the hype everyone had insisted giving it. There was only so much cleaning to do in the tiny basement apartment. That strange purple sink did nothing to make doing dishes any more entertaining.  She sat by the window watching the flakes falling. For just a moment here it felt more like she was back home. Caesar was curled up in her lap, happy to find a warm spot and an ear scratch. It would be better once she found a regular teaching job. The apartment was very empty when Ken was away at work all day.

When the snow had reached an appropriate depth, Shirley leapt to her feet, unceremoniously dumping Caesar to the floor. In a flash she was buttoning up her plaid wool coat, wrapping a muffler around her neck, donning a hat, and pulling on thick gloves. There was something new and yet familiar to do. Snow was here!

 As she went outside, she grabbed the snow shovel by the door. There was a narrow sidewalk between their door and the street that they are responsible for shoveling. Shirley paused for a moment to gaze at the frosty path for a long moment. The homesickness that she had been feeling for the past couple of weeks abated somewhat. She breathed in a deep breath of air. There was a piney tang in it that was different from home, but a nice, clean touch. It was exhilarating.

She dug into the snow with a right good will. Before she was a half dozen shovelfuls down the walk she was sweating. She unwound the muffler and fanned the cold air toward herself. Another three shovelfuls and she took off her hat and dropped it in the snow. What on earth was happening? A moment later the muffler was discarded in the snow. Then she unbuttoned her coat. The gloves were next. When she got to the end of the sidewalk she turned and looked back. It didn’t look quite right. It looked . . . wet. Dang! It was melting already. No wonder she was so hot! She had bundled up for a Minnesota snow storm. With the dry air and warmer temperatures all she would have needed was a jacket and light gloves.

She leaned on the shovel and pushed at her bangs. They were damp with the perspiration of exertion. There was more to getting used to life in Colorado than she had expected. She turned her face to the sky and let the flakes fall gently on her skin. Definitely not like Minnesota. The tiny flakes barely produced any moisture as they melted.

With a sigh she walked back up the wet concrete path, picking up pieces of discarded clothing as she went. At least it was a story that she could entertain Ken with at dinner tonight. Perhaps by then she would feel more like laughing over it. For now all she wanted to do was curl up on the couch under the cat.

Suddenly a though occurred to her. What would her mother think if she found out that moving to Colorado had turned her into a stripper?  Okay, there was the laugh.

Boulder Canyon Boogie

Copyright ©2012 by Laurie Kay Olson

I first met Elsa at church, although I no longer remember the moment. She was a sweet, round, woman who was down on her luck and had just landed a job as a nanny. As we became friends she told me the stories that made up her amazing life.

She had been born in Helsinki a few years before the outbreak of World War II to a Finnish father and Swedish mother. Her little girl memories consisted of enemy planes flying overhead, going to school and coming home to find that their house no longer existed, and of having to move into the Swedish consulate and accidentally walking in on Swedish ambassador in his private chambers. Eventually many children in Finland were evacuated to neutral Sweden.

During the transport, because she was able to speak both languages, she was selected to be a sort of “spokeschild” for the transport. Upon arrival in Stockholm it would be her duty to greet the king on behalf of all the children.

The children were assembled to be assigned to families who had volunteered to take them in. Elsa stood waiting for the king to arrive, imagining what it would be like. Trumpets, a red carpet rolled out, and a grand man in a gold crown and robes striding in. She was drawn from her daydreams by a man in a gray suit. The man asked her to come and sit with him so that they could talk. She politely declined with an explanation that she was to wait for the king. The man laughed and explained that he was the king. She looked at him skeptically until someone else addressed him as “your majesty.”

Elsa would laugh over the memory. During the war she lived with two different families. When the war was over she returned to her own family. Eventually, Elsa emigrated to the U.S. in search of a better life. For those first few frightening years she had worked as a nanny. Then she fell in love, married, and had a daughter, but the marriage was made in hell. Her husband was an unkind, egotistical man who would beat her. When she was pregnant with their second child, a son, he beat her so severely that the boy had died. By the time that they had moved to Colorado it was clear to her that she had to leave before he killed her.

Once she had made sure that she had once again escaped the threat of death in her life, she struggled to pick up the pieces. She returned to taking care of other people’s children. She very carefully constructed new dreams. She longed for quiet solace, a place truly her own, a cabin in the mountains. She longed to just be herself. Not someone’s daughter, wife, mother or nanny. She had once wanted to be an artist, but her husband had killed that dream just as certainly as he had killed their son.

Several years after our first meeting she managed to buy a small, rundown cabin at the top of Boulder Canyon. Slowly but surely she renovated the place into something livable, comfortable and all her own. I often drove up the canyon to join her there for a cup of tea and another story from her amazing life. I would invariably encourage her to write her stories to share with the world.

When we would meet for lunch in the city and it was time to go home, she would say. “Well, I’ve got to boogie up the canyon!” If we were at her place and I told her about something new in town she would remark, “I’m going to have to boogie down the canyon and check that out!” She was the only person I knew who made the word boogie part of her regular vocabulary, especially since disco was dead. I always had to laugh over the image in my head of this plump little Scandinavian woman shaking her chubby booty up and down the canyon. Of course, I always saw it without her car.

One day my mother called to tell me that she had heard that Elsa had been boogying down the canyon and had missed one of the many sharp curves. For a moment I thought that my own heart had stopped. Elsa was gone from this world? How could that be? It wasn’t fair that her life was cut short just as she was beginning to find herself and some peace.

That canyon is haunted by many souls who have come to grief on those dangerous curves. One of them is now a plump blond dancing and shaking her booty as she boogies up and down the canyon, free at last.

Riding the Green

By Laurie Kay Olson

Copyright ©2012 by Laurie Kay Olson

It was our first vacation as a new family. A “blended” family they call it. For the first time in my life I had a brother and sister, both older. We filled the old VW bus and headed across Colorado. At Dinosaur National Monument we picked up the Green River to spend four glorious days. My father and stepmother were brave to take three teenagers on such a trip, trapped with us for hours in a vehicle and in the wilderness for days.

It was gorgeous weather as we took off, a float tour of three rafts. One of the river guides had his parents and sister in from Arkansas, which was entertaining as Jim picked on poor Heidi. The guide for our raft pointed out various points of interest, starting with a rock outcropping in the shape of a St. Bernard’s head. He regaled us with tales of Powell’s first expedition to explore the river.

Beth, Owen and I were in the midst of working out our territorial issues. I had never had siblings before and this was new ground. I made the mistake of borrowing one of Owen’s books and leaving it open face down to save my place. All hell broke loose for a bit as I learned that Owen had a pet peeve about people doing such a thing. There was ever such a verbal scuffle over that one.

Beth, Heidi and I hung out as the three girls on the trip. Heidi was a bit squeamish over the indigenous reptile population, particularly snakes. She would periodically start shrieking “SNAIK!” in her best Arkansas accent. Invariably, as she did so, one of the handsome young guides was walking by. Before we knew it “snaik” was our watchword for the approach of one of these men. The term was accompanied by giggles and glances over the secret meaning.

Evenings were spent around campfires. For the first time in my life, nights were slept out beneath the stars. For the first time in my life I used a down sleeping bag. For the first time in my life we found out that I was allergic and that I developed a rash. Spending the days wet with river water soothed the itch.

We made it through Hell’s Half Mile, Upper Disaster, and Lower Disaster. Amazing, adrenalin filled rides. Jim put Heidi in the raft so that she would face plant in the. Below such places we would find and pick up paddles lost by people on paddle trips who had not made it through so cleanly. In other places we floated along with the guide gently directing the raft with his one big oar, while we sat and enjoyed the journey.

On the third day the river widened out of canyons and steep valleys into vast, shallow flats. Sand bars with tall grasses interrupted the river in long intervals. The trip slowed. As the wind rose we found ourselves in the doldrums of the Green. The flow of the river in one direction was matched by the wind from the other.

We broke out the paddles we had found along, hove to, and paddled with a right good will. At last we made small progress. Right up until we lodged in the shallows and came to a complete stop; beached like some freshwater whale. We had to lighten the load to get moving again. Everyone jumped into the shallow water and pushed the raft back into the main current. Then they jumped back in. Except for me, I was about as athletic as a tortoise. They had to drag me back aboard and dump me in the bottom of the raft. Dad was looking down at me with that “Oh, Lilly, you are so embarrassing!” look on his face. I scrambled back into my place on the raft’s edge and put my face into the wind. I wasn’t in the middle of nowhere in Utah to make a good impression. Making a good impression would require things like a daily shower and clothes that weren’t spending the day soaked with river water. After 13 years with the man, you’d think I’d be used to disappointing him. Beth cast a sympathetic and supportive glance my way. Suddenly I realized that I was no longer all alone. My spirits rebounded as the river narrowed into another canyon and we sped up.

Other than my run in with my father issues, it was the trip of a lifetime, to be remembered forever. Beth became a permanent friend and ally. We sat together on the bus ride back to where the car was parked. I was amazed, while in the doldrums we had become the sisters we had never had.

Dream-Walker

©2012 by Laurie Kay Olson

I had dropped into bed early that night, too tired to dream. Sleep had come almost instantly, but it was not to last. Hours later something was wrong. I was flying by night, no longer safely asleep in bed. I looked out of the plane at the dark, snow-covered fields below. We wouldn’t be in the air much longer. We wouldn’t reach Colorado Springs. Jim was fighting to keep her aloft, swearing mightily under his breath. Strangely I became very aware of my tennis shoes. They no longer seemed connected to me.

The crash seemed to take forever. The impact, the dirt and snow spraying, the wrenching sound of tearing, dying metal – everything passed nightmarishly slow. Just as suddenly it all stopped, leaving an equally deafening silence. For long seconds nothing happened.

I lay in the wreckage staring at the night sky though the ripped fuselage. Dead? Alive? I wasn’t sure. I heard Jim sitting up, testing his limbs, standing. I couldn’t move. A cold realization that I was going to die struck me. That which I feared most. Perhaps I already was dead and just hadn’t yet departed my former corporeal home.

Jim stood looking out of the wreckage, then bent to see if I was still alive. I could feel his cold fingers pressing into my neck, but I couldn’t feel an answering thump against them. I tried to urge him to go for help, but I couldn’t speak. There just wasn’t enough of me left. He had to save himself, my life was already forfeit. I wouldn’t be here when he returned. I knew that now. I felt a sob lodged in my chest. Or was it my final breath?

He hesitated a moment, then climbed out and dropped into the snowy field. I listened to his retreating footsteps crunching through the snow, certain now that he would be safe. I would wait for death alone in the cold.

I jerked awake, still held captive by the dream, my heart pounding, a cold perspiration clinging to my skin. There had been a plane crash. Somehow I knew it had really happened. I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. In the cold gray dawn I crept shivering from my bed into the living room. The morning news might return me to reality.

I curled up on the couch under the old crocheted afghan and started to doze until the voice of the news anchor brought me back. I bolted upright. There had been a plane crash just north of Colorado Springs, not far from the Air Force Academy. The pilot had climbed out and gone for help, flagging down cars on I-25, while the passenger had died in the wreckage.

Somehow I had died in the night and yet hadn’t. I pressed my face into my hands and shuddered. What now? I considered bailing on work, to drive down to the Springs, to walk into the pilot’s hospital room like a crazy woman and try to find out if I was somehow connected to the one who had died. But even if I could get through, would it do anything more than terrorize a man who had already been through so much? I leaned back into the couch with a huge sigh.

The memory of an old gypsy woman who had gazed into her crystal ball for me came rushing back like a tidal wave. I had never understood her words. Now they held an eerie clarity for me and they seemed to echo in my head. “You are a dream-walker, child, you like to travel at night.”

Java Jail

By Laurie Kay Olson

© 2011 by Laurie Kay Olson

  It is true what they say, that being a mother is the greatest job ever, at least most of the time. All it takes is a case of the flu to turn those little angels into demon spawn. Not their flu, yours. Those happy little shrieks you normally appreciate suddenly pierce your skull like a bolt of lightning. This can also turn you into Cruella DeVille on steroids.

I leaned against the kitchen counter, hoping that it would support me in ways I could not do for myself at the moment. There was a major breakfast skirmish going on behind me and I knew that the cereal was going to fly. If they didn’t knock it off there was a definite possibility that I would be the one to launch the opening salvo. My kingdom for a grenade launcher. Was it getting cold in here?

At the moment I just didn’t care about much of anything. My throat ached only slightly less than my head, the nausea was creeping upward, and everything hurt like I had been sleeping on a bed of rocks. I was on the verge of taking my husband’s name in vain, even though he had managed to get the “herd”| dressed for school. I tried not to look too closely, although I did see that Gina had red stockings on with a pink dress. Oh, well, it wouldn’t hurt her to be a fashion “don’t” for a day.

Coffee, I needed coffee. That would perk me up enough to get the kids off to school and me to call in to work. It took some concentration then. A coffee pot, right, I needed the coffee pot.

“Tommy!” the shriek was a bullet through the skull. I grasped the edge of the counter to steady myself and turned around. Tommy had fished the toy from the box of cereal out of Lisa’s bowl. I quickly retrieved it from them and placed it on injured reserve. It was out of the game for today. No one would get the toy until later. Tommy was the loudest protest, but that was probably because of taking Gina’s spoon to the head. I think I did it without shouting. I think. I’m not sure. If I only had a hangover I would be feeling so much better.

It was feeling colder in here. I wrapped the blue chenille bathrobe tighter and wiggled my toes inside my bear claw slippers. I was dressed in the ghosts of Christmases past. I would not have picked out either of these fashion items for myself. I suppose I brought it on myself when I said that I preferred to go barefoot. Little Lisa would have easily transposed that into “bear-foot” and then insist on these slippers. They made my feet sweat.

I would be happier in men’s pajamas and slipper socks. I was a mommy martyr at times. I especially felt like a martyr right now. Where was Todd anyway? I could really use his help. Of course he was getting ready for work. Soon, so blessedly soon I would have the house to myself and I could collapse for a few hours. Where was I? Oh, right, water. I filled the coffee pot. Now I needed coffee. I opened the cupboard and looked at the selection of coffees therein – too many to choose from. I certainly wasn’t going to grind beans today. I resorted to default mode and grabbed the red can of Folgers.

My fingers curled around the plastic lid. I couldn’t pull hard enough. Normally that was no big deal. Suddenly the can vanished from my hands. I looked up at my freshly laundered husband neat and tidy in a clean Polo shirt and Dockers. He smiled at me encouragingly and popped open the can. He looked down, raised one eyebrow, and then turned the can toward me. There in the fresh grounds was Judy, one of Lisa’s dolls. The dark brown flecks spotted her yellow floral sundress and white high heels. I reached in and pulled her out by her long blond hair. We turned together to look at Lisa.

“Put her back in there!” Lisa ordered imperiously. Her pale brown hair was still floating with static from the application of her sweater. It gave her a misleading fragile appearance.

“Why?” I asked, not sure that I really wanted to know.

“She’s been a bad girl and now she’s in jail,” Lisa claimed.

“You couldn’t let her out for good behavior?” asked Todd.

Lisa shook her head. “She isn’t e-vegetable for patrol until tomorrow.”

For a six-year-old she had some amazing moments of being precocious. “You mean eligible for parole?” I asked.

She nodded. “That’s what I said.”

“Can she at least get some exercise in the yard while I make some coffee?” I asked.

Lisa thought for a moment, one chubby finger put to her lips, and then nodded emphatically. A reprieve had been granted by the judge.

I carefully placed Judy on the lid while I scooped out the coffee. Todd marshaled the kids into their coats and mittens with a maximum of chaos while Lisa watched carefully to make sure that Judy when right back into her cell. Todd was muttering something about reviewing our television watching habits.

As Todd took the kids to school I wondered what Judy’s crime had been. As I poured my cup of coffee I remembered. Of course, the shoes, she was wearing white after Labor Day. I put one hand to my forehead. I was not thinking clearly. Oh, I definitely belonged back in bed.

I picked up Judy and took her with me. I needed someone to talk to.