Magpie #31.....

Through the window.....
It was going to be a cold one tonight and I shivered at the thought of anyone.....any thing being at the mercy of the elements on a night such as this. Standing at my kitchen sink and filling up the old whistling kettle to put on the stove to boil, I glanced out the window. The bright floodlight from the tall wooden pole by the barn brightened and dimmed due to the blizzard conditions that obliterated my view intermittently. Further in the distance I could vaguely make out the warm glow of the lights from the huge farmhouse which sheltered my family; my daughter, her husband and their five children, not to mention miscellaneous pets of various sizes, shapes and ages. To my delight, they built my little house within walking distance. The barn sheltered the horses. These animals led better lives than some humans. This was a fact that I knew for sure.

I set the kettle on the stove, got out a large ceramic mug and the cocoa mix in readiness to make a comforting and warm brew to savor while reading an excellent book I had started yesterday. I heard clicking of nails from furry paws on the tile floor and looked down to see my best friend, my black lab, Sheba. "Say, old lady, you want to go outside before I settle down in my chair?". She wagged her tail and whined as she went to the door and nudged the bells I had hanging from the doorknob. "You're not gonna like it out there", I said as I opened the heavy wooden inside door and then the storm door. The wind tugged at the door and gusted in, bringing with it stinging cold needles of snow. Sheba quickly ran outside to do her business, her blackness making a stark impression in the world of white and swirling snow. I closed the door and went back to making my cup of cocoa, opening first one cupboard then another searching for the package of shortbread cookies.

I had the cookies on a plate and the cocoa made by the time Sheba barked at the door, impatiently letting me know that she was ready for admittance. As she came quickly inside, she stopped and shook her body, her ears flapping, as bits of melted snow flew off of her body and onto the floor, the table, the walls and me. Sheba trotted into the living room, her nails clicking on the kitchen floor and then turning into a soft thudding sound when her paws sunk into the thick carpeting as she headed toward the fireplace and the warm glow of the crackling fire. She settled herself with a grunt and a moan and began licking her paws to clean the snow off. I set my tray with the cocoa and cookies on a side table and settled myself into an overstuffed chair and reached for my book. Before opening it, however, I sat and gazed at nothing in particular and let my mind wander back to so many years ago.....a lifetime ago.

I came from such a poor family. There were so many of us that lived in that tiny shack that thinking of it now, it seems impossible that we all managed to survive. Uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings....we all lived together and worked together just to put food on the table. We lived so far out in the country with no electricity, no modern conveniences of any kind. The men worked for a nearby farmer and the women raised the children, cooked, cleaned and did the countless things that had to be done in order to run a household and keep a family alive. We did not go to school. There were no agencies back then that made us go. No one kept track of such things. My mother tried to teach us what she knew but soon it was obvious that mother had not had proper schooling herself and could not teach us what she simply did not know. My sister and I began to walk a distance of several miles through the woods that took us to the back of a church and the school at the church. We could quietly sneak through the trees and bushes and hidden by them we could sit under the window of the classroom and listen to the teacher without being seen. We could hear the lessons and would follow along with the class.....we corrected each other's work.

We got the benefits of the classroom every day that we could make it, seeing the flowing robes of the teacher always from behind. We never once saw her face and yet we felt we knew her. My sister and I were discovered one day by a gardener and when taken inside and our stories told and digested, we were offered cleaning jobs in trade for an education. I continued my education and finished college on a scholarship to become a teacher myself. Every time I would address my class with my back to the windows, it would bring back memories of how it all started. I married well, had children of my own and ended up living in my own little house on the property of my daughter's horse farm with my loyal Sheba.

All those nights I laid in bed as a child and cried at the hopelessness of our situation, I never dreamed that my life story would have a comforting ending; that I would be an honored and respected teacher, a motivational speaker and author with stories of my own that would prove to be an inspiration to many. You just never can tell, I thought to myself, as I set my mug down and opened my book. Sheba sighed and stretched herself out in front of the fire while the snow swirled and danced in the glow from the light on top of the pole.

~ Inspired by a photo displayed in Magpie Tales ~