I'll Leave My Heart in Boulder

I’ve been in Boulder for the last 10 days. Ten long, absolutely heavenly days. Unfortunately, my stay will soon be over and almost as soon as I get home I’ll begin thinking about next year’s visit. It’s safe to say these two weeks are some of the richest, most relaxing days of my year.

I first started coming here in the summer of 2001 to attend the Graduate School of Banking. I studied hard and graduated from the three year program with some degree of merit. Enough anyway that they invited me back to teach one of the third year courses, a bank management simulation. I jumped at the opportunity and so this 2 week stay at the end of July has become a regular part of my summer.

Sam asked me, while we sat waiting for my plane, what I loved most about Boulder. My answers spilled out effortlessly, tumbling, one after another.

I love the mountains,
I love the bohemian people,
I love the climate,
I love that you can walk anywhere you want to go,
I love the big beautiful campus that sprawls across the center of town,
I love my students,
I love teaching,
I love the rich exchange of ideas,
I love the break from the craziness of work,
I love the massage I get from Jessica each year,
I love taking daily yoga classes at The Tree House and Om Time Yoga,
I love walking along Boulder Creek,
I love the coffee houses and the independent bookstore on Pearl,
I love Wahoo Tacos and the pear lemon sorbet at Karma Cuisine,
I love waking up early and having eggs and bacon for breakfast every morning,
I love that this is a Dr. Pepper town and you can get the diet version nearly every where you go,
I love working only 6 hours a day,
I love attending live music performances and poetry slams at night,
I love that I have time every day to read as well as take a nap,
and I love - oh my God how I love - the light.

The light in Boulder is simply amazing. I suppose this kind of light happens in other parts of the country, but I’ve never seen anything quite like the light in Boulder. It ‘s the sort of light that warms and intensifies everything it touches. Sometimes I feel like my heart will break from the pure brilliance of color here. It’s something you just don’t experience in the hazy summer heat of Kansas City.

All this will come to a close tomorrow as I head for the airport. I’ll be happy to see Sam and Katherine and Miko and Steve and Jenne’ and Nena, and I’ll be happy to sleep in my own bed again and to hear the buzzing of the cicadas. But if you catch me with a far off look on my face, you’ll know where I am.

Abnormal Brain Waves 1980 Part 4

My cast was fun for the first few days when everyone wanted to sign it and friends offered to carry my books. But it didn’t take long for the novelty to wear off. Within weeks it was dirty and stinky and I had to shove a pencil down inside it to satisfy the itch that lived inside there day and night.

I wore the cast for 6 weeks and when it came off my arm was as good as new. No one talked about the accident anymore, it was old news. And besides, there were lot’s of other stories to occupy our interest.

For Halloween, someone (well, we all knew who it was, but pretended we didn’t) had drug an old outhouse to the front door of the school and tied a chain around and through it and then through the handles of the front door so that you couldn’t open the doors and you couldn’t budge the outhouse. The icing on the cake was that they hung a dead raccoon by its foot from the ceiling of the outhouse.

I didn’t actually see the raccoon, and I am glad I didn’t. It makes me sad to think of it hanging there. But I thought it was an exquisite act of rebellion and I was thrilled with the power we had to make the adults shake their heads and roll their eyes in disgust.

There was also a scandalous love triangle that had us all enthralled. Debra was a senior, Ritchie a junior, and Colleen was a sophomore. Debra and Ritchie had been dating for over a year, but Colleen had eyes for Ritchie and rumor had it that they had been seen together more than once. Colleen was popular and beautiful, with fine china doll features. She was always nice to me, but that didn’t keep me from disliking her. All in all, she was just too perfect.

To think about it now I realize this triangle had all the drama and heartbreak of a Shakespeare play. Ritchie went back and forth between the two girls several times. Debra would become despondent; some said she threatened to commit suicide. When Ritchie was with Colleen, Debra walked around with red swollen eyes everywhere she went. And when they were back together, her eyes were dry, but still had that scared, desperate look of a woman who knows she is on borrowed time.

Meanwhile, Colleen remained calm, cool and collected. When Debra and Ritchie were together, Colleen would smile sweetly and go on about her business. She seemed to carry herself with a knowing air of confidence, with a certainty that it was only a matter of time before Ritchie realized the error of his decision and left Debra for good. In the end, she was right.

It was against this backdrop of scandal that my own drama began to unfold. For several days, I had been feeling a persistent ache behind my eyes. Bright light made them hurt and I was having trouble focusing my vision. I’d told my parents about it, and they had been concerned, but we hadn’t gone to the doctor yet.

I was practicing basketball in the gym after school. Volleyball had just ended, and we had just started practicing basketball. We had the same coach for both sports and the girls remained the same as well, so really we just traded one ball for another.

At any rate, we’d been running drills for about half and hour when I started to feel myself get lightheaded. I shook it off and ran another drill. As I waited in line with the other girls for my next turn, I felt everything go white. I tried to say something to Diane, the girl standing next to me, but before I could open my mouth, I felt myself melting to the floor.

That fall is something I will remember my whole life. It was the most natural, relaxing thing in the world. Like my whole body had turned to butter and just melted to the floor. I must have hit the ground hard, but I didn’t feel any pain. I could hear what was going on around me, could sense the commotion, but I was in a far, far away place, as dreamy as any I had ever imagined.

I opened my eyes, but couldn’t see anything. Everything was black. I tried to speak, but no words came out. I didn’t mind. I would stay in that dreamy place for as long as I could. I heard Coach Gillespie say for someone to call the EMTs. My parents were EMTs so I knew they would be coming soon. I knew something was wrong, I could feel that the right side of my body was trembling, but I was so relaxed, so comfortable, that I didn’t care.

Angela’s mom showed up after a few minutes. She was an EMT too. I had always liked Angela’s mom. She was cool and hip and when Angela and I were kids she used to let us listen to her Mac Davis album over and over and over. Angela’s mom told me that I was going to be just fine and that my Mom & Dad would be there soon and that they were going to take me to the hospital in Larned. I tried to nod my head ok, but the movement was lost in the waves of bliss in which I was absorbed.

The trembling in my right side got stronger and I could feel my arm and leg twitching against the floor. The rhythm of the motion felt good, but I remember wondering why the right half of my body was so active when the rest of me felt drenched in molasses.

My parents came then and they put me in the back of our car and we drove to the hospital in Larned. I still couldn’t see, and didn’t want to talk, and my right side was still trembling, but I was less dreamy and I was aware of everything that was going on around me. As the dreaminess began to fade, my head began to hurt, an intense throbbing pain that felt like nothing I had ever experienced.

The doctor examined me and told my parents I likely had epilepsy. He thought I had probably just experienced a grand maul or a petite maul seizure. Of course, I had no idea what a grand maul or petite maul seizure meant, but I knew enough to know epilepsy was not a good thing to have.

I spent the next several days in the hospital. My vision returned, I was able to speak again, and the trembling stopped, but my head hurt so badly that I couldn’t bear to open my eyes. I was moved to the hospital in Great Bend, and then on to the hospital in Wichita as one doctor after the next tried to figure out what was wrong with me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the doctors in Wichita didn’t think I had epilepsy. Instead, they suspected I had a brain tumor. My parents never let on that there was anything seriously wrong, and strangely, I didn’t think to ask. Despite the fact that I had the mother of all headaches, I was enjoying the attention and the adventure of my hospital stay. My room was filled with balloons and flowers and posters, and a tidy stack of cards from my friends and neighbors was delivered to my room each day. I mostly slept and watched TV, which was, for a teenager, more or less the pinnacle of life.

I figured out that if I laid perfectly still, or moved very slowly, I could keep my head ache in check, but if I tried to sit up, or move around, waves of nausea would wash over me, I would start to see colors, and the whole right side of my body would start shaking again.

I was sent for a CAT scan, and while waiting for the test, I noticed that several of the kids in the waiting room had their heads shaved. This alarmed me. I had long blonde hair and was not too keen on having it shaved off. My parents assured me that it was unlikely that I would have to have my head shaved, but it was then that I realized that these other kids were really sick, and that my little adventure might be more serious than I had realized.

Luckily, at about that time, I started to get better. The headaches began to subside and the “seizures” seemed to stop. But still, no one knew what was wrong with me.

I had an EEG test, where they hooked wires up to my scalp and flashed strobe lights in my face to measure the way my brain waves reacted. My results were abnormal, but not in any sort of normal way. My Dad said he had known this much all along.

I got to go back home and back to school, where I learned that I had been dropped from drivers ed class because I was deemed an unsafe driver, prone to seizures. Our drivers ed teacher was also the football coach, and to this day I remember him as arrogant and cocky, with a pervasive case of short man syndrome.

I had a couple more stays in the hospital as they tried to determine a diagnosis. They finally decided to call my condition a “migraine equivalent” brought on by trauma to the head. (my pick-up accident)

I was given a prescription for an anti-convulsant and an anti-depressant and told not to drink alcohol under any circumstances. I suffered a few more “attacks” but for the most part, I was fine.

Life went on.

Sunny replaced her pick-up. I got to finish drivers ed in the spring. The boy who was responsible for the raccoon and the outhouse set a smoke bomb off in his locker, just for fun. And Ritchie gave Colleen his class ring to wear on her perfect, slender, creamy white ring finger.

Just a Little Jerk of the Wheel 1980 Part 3

Not long after homecoming, but before my “relationship” with Jamie had taken its final breath, I was in a car accident. Actually it was a pick-up accident.

It was early evening and I was out riding with my friend Sunny in her little yellow pick-up. She was a year older than me, a Sophomore, and she already had her learner’s permit. Having your learner’s permit meant you could drive to and from school or on any farm related errand. Since we lived in the country and everyone farmed, just about everything could be described as a farm related errand.

But we weren’t on a farm related errand, real or imagined. We were just out driving, for something to do. We were on a gravel road (all the country roads were gravel) and this particular road had a little bridge that went over a dried up stream bed. There was a hill just ahead of the bridge and if you drove pretty fast you could kind of jump the bridge with your car. It was fun and we did it several times, driving faster each time. We had just turned the pick-up around to do it again and were zipping down the road gaining speed.

For some completely unknown and insane reason, I decided to reach over and jerk the steering wheel. I guess I did it just to be ornery. I can safely say there was no thought what so ever that went in to that little jerk of the wheel. For years I told people I thought Sunny was about to go off the road and I jerked the wheel to save us. And for some strange reason, Sunny never questioned my story. But the truth was, I was just being stupid.

It’s not hard to imagine what happened next. The pick-up swerved from one side of the gravel to the other as Sunny tried to regain control. But we were going too fast and the little truck careened off the side of the rode and down into the ditch. Our front tires hit the bottom of the ditch with such force that it popped the bed straight up in the air and the truck flipped its back end over its front and then rolled side over side for what seemed like forever. The whole thing happened in slow motion, but it was probably over in just a matter of seconds.

When the little truck finally came to a stop, it was laying on its side, passenger side down. Sunny and I checked to see if we were each ok and then, because we could smell gas and had seen too many movies where wrecked cars promptly exploded, we scrambled to climb up out of the drivers side. I don’t remember if we got the door open or if we climbed through the window, although it seems we squeezed through the window, using the steering wheel for leverage. What I do remember is that I had to do it with only one arm because my left arm was in so much pain I couldn’t move it.

Free from the truck, we debated what to do. We were about a mile and a half north of town and about a mile south of Jamie’s farm. Never one to miss an opportunity for drama, I wanted to walk to Jamie’s house. (I was certain Jamie’s family would regret making me miss homecoming once they realized that I had just been in a terrible, potentially fatal accident!)

Sunny wasn’t so easily convinced. It was her pick-up that was totaled after all, and she was already worried about what her parents were going to do. She was anxious to get home.

We started walking and after only a few minutes some older kids drove by and picked us up. We drove back to see the pick-up on it’s side in the field and Sunny and I took turns relaying the details of our brush with death. It wasn’t long before my arm was hurting so much that I lost interest in telling the story, and Sunny was nearly frantic with the dread of telling her parents, so we headed back to town.

Sunny and I didn’t see each other again for a couple of days. I went to the emergency room in Larned that night to have my broken arm x-rayed and put in a cast. Sunny got to stay home from school the next day because her stomach was bruised and she was sore from bouncing around inside the pickup. And then it was the weekend.

Somehow without ever talking about it, Sunny and I settled on a shared version of what happened that night, although I suspect she knew as well as I did, that it wasn’t true. I hadn’t been trying to save us from going off the rode, I caused us to go off the road.

That little yellow pick-up sat in Sunny’s backyard for several months before they finally got rid of it. The windshield was shattered and the skin was bruised and dented and crunched all over. People would drive by and point and say things like “That’s the truck the Ellis girl and Nelson girl were driving the night they had that wreck. It’s a wonder they survived it. The Lord must have been lookin’ out for them.”

I think he might have been.

Dancing With the Devil 1980 Part 2

I've been spending a lot of time inside the head of my 14 year old self, that summer of 1980. I don’t know why this period of my life has so occupied my thoughts lately, but it has. It’s something about turning 40 a few weeks ago I think. At any rate, I am going to keep writing about it for awhile...




So that magical summer ended and my life as a Freshman began. I felt so proud of myself for being in high school. The school was in the next town over, about 6 miles away, and I rode the bus to get there each morning. I had a really cool locker and changed classes every hour. And, there was a boy whose name was Jamie Thompson, a senior, who seemed to stop by my locker a lot.

Jamie was really handsome and played on the football team. His family lived in the country, near my town, and his sister, Desiree, was just a year older than me. I had known him my whole life. Jamie’s dad was a farmer, and his mom fixed people’s hair.

I remember when I was much younger, my mom had come home from having Jamie’s mom fix her hair, and she told me that she had just had the most amazing experience. Mrs. Thompson had a new hair brush that you could plug in to the wall and make it blow hot air. Instead of having her sit underneath a hair dryer, Mrs. Thompson brushed my mom’s hair dry. Mom said she had never felt anything so luxurious.

I was too young to date, so Jamie and I mostly hung out together by my locker before school started and over the lunch break. Homecoming was coming up and there was a big dance after the football game. This was to be my first official dance (other than the ones I went to on the tennis courts at 4-H camp), and I was nearly beside myself with excitement over the idea of going on an “almost real date” to the homecoming dance with Jamie.

A few weeks before homecoming he asked me. He asked in a normal way. Something like, “You know homecoming is coming up, and I thought we should do something together.” I nodded my head enthusiastically, relieved that he had made it official and I could start saying I had a date for the dance. But he didn’t stop there. Words kept coming out of his mouth. Strange words.

“You know my family goes to the such and such church.” (This was a church that was out in the country. I had been a few times with my cousins, who were regulars. It was less formal than the Methodist Church I attended. Instead of being formal, it was very, very intense. It was the sort of church where people raised their hands in the air while praying, and sometimes they started saying things in some sort of foreign language. Though I had never heard it said in so many words, I knew that a lot of people thought this church was kind of like a cult.)

“Yeah, I think I knew that,” I answered, not sure what this had to do with homecoming, but feeling a sort of uneasiness well up in the pit of my stomach.

“Well, we don’t believe in dancing, and so we can’t really go to the homecoming dance. I thought maybe you could come out to my house and we could just hang out there?”

I am sure there was a dead silence between us, but all I could hear was the roaring sound in my ears as my face turned beat red and the weight of what Jamie had just said began to sink in.

I’d been invited to homecoming by a boy I had a huge crush on. I had a date for homecoming. This was to be my first real dance. My first real date. Jamie was going to help win the football game, maybe even score a touchdown! I would cheer and holler from the bleachers, and high five my friends. And then I would go change into my outfit for the dance, and wait for Jamie to change out of his football uniform. And then we would hang out in the gym, listen to music, and drink punch and eat cookies and dance and laugh and joke around. And then when a slow song came on, we would slow dance together. And then he would take me home, and kiss me goodnight, and the whole evening was going to be perfect!

I realized Jamie was talking again. He was saying how his Mom was going to make us a special dinner and how he promised it would be fun. My eyes welled up with tears, but I forced them back down. I smiled at him reassuringly. Of course I would go with him I said. I didn’t care that much about some stupid dance anyway. He gave me a quick hug and then we had to get to our next class.

I walked around for the rest of the day in a daze, the ringing in my ears didn’t let up. I hated his stupid church. And I hated his stupid parents for making him believe that there was something sinful about going to a homecoming dance. I hated Jamie for acting like this was all just normal – and wholesome - for God sakes! And most of all, I hated myself for the fact that I was going along with it all.

The night of Homecoming, I sat in the bleachers and cheered the Tigers to victory. Jamie played really well, but I don’t remember if he scored a touchdown. My friends were all talking about the dance, and whose house they were going to to get ready after the game. I felt miserable.

Later, Jamie picked me up at a friend’s and drove me out to his house in the country. We had an awkward dinner with his parents and then we all sat around the table (his Mom & Dad, his sister Desiree, and me) and played a “bored” game. My parents had said I could stay out till 11:00 pm that night, but I think by 10:00 we’d already eaten and finished two rounds of the game, and his parents were ready to go to bed, so Jamie took me home.

It was the most disappointing night imaginable.

Not long after that Jamie lost his class ring while working in a field. He borrowed my Dad’s metal detector to try to find it, but with no luck. I had been expecting that any day he was going to ask me to go steady with him, which meant that I would put a whole bunch of tape around the underside of his ring to make it small enough so that I could wear it. The very coolest girls in school were all wearing their boyfriend’s rings, and I had hoped that I might be able to join their ranks.

But with no ring to wear, and no prospect of having a date for any of the dances, I soon lost interest in Jamie. And he with me.

I went to lots of dances over the next 3½ years and I have to admit that most of them were not that special. But I’ve always regretted missing that first homecoming. And to this day, if I could go back and do it over again, I would. I would tell Jamie Thompson, thanks but no thanks. He could enjoy his family dinner and his “bored” game without me. I would go to the dance, and dance barefooted with my friends. I would drink punch and eat cookies, and laugh and joke around. I might have missed out on the slow dances, but then again, maybe not. And I am sure the evening would have been perfect.

The Buzz About Town

The cicadas started up tonight. I find their song deeply reassuring and as soon as I heard their familiar buzz, I stopped, sat down, and savored the moment.

For me, summer isn’t really summer until the cicadas start to sing. It was also 97 degrees and humid today, so I guess we now have all the ingredients we need to make it official. Happy Summer!

I used to like baseball... 1980 Part 1

The summer before my freshman year of high school, the summer of 1980, was the best summer of my life. I played softball in the dusty field that was at the center of town and my team was exceedingly good. I had never been particularly coordinated when it came to sports, but somehow things clicked for me that summer, and for that summer and that summer alone, I was good. In fact I was great.

I played first base, and my friend LeaIla pitched. Sunny played short stop. I don’t remember who else was on the team, but it didn’t matter. All the balls came to us, and we were unstoppable.

About half our games were away games, which meant we would pile onto the bus and drive 30 minutes to an hour to meet our opponents. I knew some of the girls on the other teams, because we played them in basketball and volleyball as well.

Bunny played for the Hanston team. Bunny was short for Bonita, which my Mom said meant “beautiful” in Spanish. Bunny was pretty and I remember thinking it was a good thing she was. How awful would it be to be ugly, AND to be stuck with a name like Bonita. There would be no end to the ribbing you would have to endure at school.

Gay played for Spearville, which was over an hour away. She was tall and had shortish brown hair and freckles and you could just tell she was really nice. I worried about her name too. Back then “gay” didn’t mean homosexual, at least not that we were aware of, yet I knew it was a decidedly risky name to bear. What if she wasn’t gay? What if she was sad and depressed instead? I had to wonder at the wisdom these girls’ parents had exhibited in naming them.

I had always liked my name. (I still do) There was a girl named Tammy in my grade, and I was briefly jealous of her name, and inquired of my parents how I could go about changing my name to Tammy. I don’t remember what they said, but the feeling soon passed, and I was mostly just grateful not to be a “Bunny” or a “Gay.”

When I wasn't playing with my own team, I was busy watching the other teams in our town play. There was a game played nearly every night at the baseball field in the center of my town. The field was on the far corner of the grade school play ground and there were bleachers set up on either side of home plate.

The field was just a few blocks from my house, which was at the north edge of town, and each night after dinner, I would ride my yellow 10 speed to the field to meet my friends and watch the games.

There were always a lot of people at the games, especially the men’s games. The adults sat in the bleachers, and the teenagers sat on the hoods of their cars. People would bring their ice chests full of pop and beer to drink while they watched. Some people even brought their dinner and ate it picnic style on the ground next to the bleachers. There was always a big orange thermos sweating on a table next to the bleachers with little Dixie cups next to it. The water was for anyone who wanted it and I remember it was the coldest, best water I had ever tasted.

I remember being so carefree and full of confidence that summer. I had a really dark tan, and an awesome perm that was curly underneath and straight on top, just like Jonni Millington’s. My curfew had been extended and I could stay out till 10 o’clock, even during the week. I rode my bike everywhere, and because many of my friends were already starting to drive, I took a few “forbidden” rides with teenagers – and act that was as thrilling as it was dangerous. I could catch and throw and hit the ball and my softball team was undefeated. The start of school seemed far, far away, but even the thought of it wasn’t so bad because I would be starting high school.

I felt like I had the whole world ahead of me. And I did.