gotohealth's Blog

IDENTITY

Mar

31

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Listening to and reading 12 RULES FOR LIFE and BEYOND ORDER, by Writer, Psychologist/Philosopher Dr. Jordon Peterson, I am led to clarify my identity. Peterson suggests that in playing my game of life, I develop a target or I will have nothing to aim for.

The first game I can remember playing as a 4-yr-old was the game of house. In my last blog post, I told the story of Sand Hollow and how Dickie Randall and I dug in the sand and adjacent cave, playing house.

At recess when I was in first grade, I remember a group of us gathered under an oak tree. We gathered the fall leaves, that had fallen, into the outlines of a house. I remember even creating a toilet in the section we made into a bathroom. There is incongruity in that picture memory of our play, because I was living in a farm house with only an outdoor toilet at that time in my life. But it does indicate what I saw as my future.

Moving on to the first years of playing house with Sam, when our first daughter was born. I remember I couldn't take my eyes off this wonderful gift of humanity. We watched her sleeping, awakening and playing for the whole first year, saying to each other, “Last year she was a nothing."

Assuming there would be a good chance I would live to see great grandchildren, I asked myself, "What do I need to do as a mother to ensure, self-reliant, responsible, generous and well-adjusted great grandchildren.”

Much of my circumstances have recently changed at age 82 and I am choosing to paint a target that enhances my original pictures. Peterson says, “The best way is to "write" and begin by choosing a problem that you can help to solve.”

My choice is to identify and clarify my target. This is not easy for me. I have a hard time saying that I am a writer. As described by Peterson, “God created us all equal.” We are all filled with voices both good and bad or evil. It’s up to us to take responsibility and choose. The problem is: The voices minute by minute distract me from my target.

Breaking my words down to implementable behavior, I choose to play “WRITER”. I am choosing playmates - mentors as well as learners I can help - that will help me stay on track. When I hit the target, I will have published a novel on the Japanese in America Experience.

GROWING UP IN SAND HOLLOW

Mar

16

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To be a Pioneer, didn’t I have to head West in a Covered Wagon pulled by horses? It occurs to me now, 2021AD, that my own family similarly pioneered new territory in Eastern Oregon and Western Idaho, from the early 1900s moving East. I was born in 1939 in Bully Creek on the Oregon side of the Snake River that forms the Idaho/Oregon border. Therefore, at the age of 82, I write my own Little House on the Prairie.

One of the 300,000 pioneer’s passing through this area wrote in her diary: “…desert so rugged, so dreary and…changes of thousand and thousands of years  won’t  yield anything worthy of consideration to the support of human life”.

In the 1920s the Black Canyon Dam on the Payette river, near Emmett, Idaho, created new farming opportunities, even before the Owyhee Dam created water for irrigation in the 1930s on the Oregon side. The Snake River rises in western Wyoming, then flows through the Snake River Plains of southern Idaho, the rugged Hells Canyon on the Oregon–Idaho border and the rolling Palouse Hills of Washington, emptying into the Columbia River at the Tri-Cities, Washington. It marks the Idaho Oregon border in what we call “The Treasure Valley” west of Boise, the capital of Idaho.

When I was 4-years-old, spring of 1943, Dad rented the Gilman farm next to the Randall family farm. Dickie Randall was my first playmate. The place is called Sand Hollow because the whole area is filled with “sand-draws”— a pond of sand, like a huge sand-box. Dickie and I played for hours digging in the sand draw below his house and next to our driveway. The sand had fallen or was blown out with wind and rain from the hillside, leaving the more compact soil, which became a cave-dwelling like place. We played house in the cave and I called myself “Yvonne” pronounced “Why-vonne”. Dickie had an older married sister named Yvonne that came to visit from Nebraska and I thought that was the prettiest name I had ever heard so I used it for “pretend”.

I did a lot of hanging-out at the Randall place. Their house was a square cinder block house with a flat roof. One day, I got too close to their German Shepherd when he was eating. They fed him out in their back yard next to the chicken coop where they collected eggs. The dog probably had almost my whole head in his mouth as he guarded his food. Dickie’s mother picked me up and carried me home, crying herself, along with me crying and bleeding all over my face, “I’m so sorry!! I’m so sorry!! What can I do?!”

All the men folk were out in the fields with their horses so Mom drove and Mrs. Randall held me as they got into our tan, one-seat Chevrolet Coupe. I think they left Dickie to fend for himself as he was a year or two older than me. Rushing to the doctor meant a couple miles out to Highway 30 on the graveled Sand Hollow road and twelve miles southeast to Caldwell - the main highway to Boise - for the stitches.

It’s surprising Mom knew where to go, but she was pregnant and had established a relationship with a family doctor. No one could afford much. I was born at home with a midwife and so were most others my age of that era.

My parents assured Mrs. Randall it was equally my fault and my memory is my feeling it my fault too. Maybe I had been warned not to mess with the dog when it was eating. After that incident our families became very close friends. We became part of the community, helping each other with harvesting and celebrations, being invited to Sunday dinners with friends after church, My mom and Mrs. Randall began exchanging recipes and almost daily chatted across their WWII Victory Gardens. Of course that made me wary of dogs. I can still feel the scar across the bridge of my nose.

DOWSING OR WATER WITCHING

Mar

5

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Having blogged about the metaphysics in the “Wave” in my last blog, I’m remembering a time when I was four years old and participated in Water Dowsing or Water Witching.

Water witching or dowsing has never been scientifically proven, but farmers all over have used this method when they drill for water. In 1943 Dad bought a 30-acre piece of property for farming onions and built a house. After the building was completed he brought Mom and me to the place to determine where he should dig a well for water.

I remember walking in the weeds of the front yard on the new farm, as our house was set back from the main graveled Sand Hollow Road in Canyon County Idaho. We walked around “witching” for where the water pump should be drilled. Mom was good at it. I could also feel the gravitational pull as I walked around the area with the willow branch. But even as a four-year-old, I can remember being somewhat skeptical. I think it was because old man Mr. Craig, who lived across the road was there too and made fun of Dad taking it so seriously.

There was a Willow tree near the irrigation canal, and Dad cut off a branch at the “Y”. With my two hands holding the two branches, I pointed the bottom of the “Y” straight up and forward. As I walked around our plot of land, where the water was closer to the surface, there was a gravitational pull and the bottom of the “Y” pointed to the spot where Dad dug and placed the pump.

I don’t remember having any problems with getting water. At first we hauled the water in buckets, but after we moved into the house Dad fixed it so there was running water to the kitchen sink. Eventually, he fixed a cold shower out the side door in the attached shed.

Today, I am less skeptical regardless of the fact that science can’t prove it. This is a good example of the energy beyond our five senses. It’s my feeling that this is an energy one can use for good or bad. But we have more control than we think with practicing positive thinking and positive prayers.