My Mother Was Kind

And people tell me so

My mother, taking kindness seriously

I was at the library yesterday and had reason to introduce myself to someone.

“Are you Rena’s niece?” she asked.

“Daughter,” I answered with a huge smile because my mother, Rena, was that kind of person. To think of her is to break into a huge smile.

“When I first came to Auburn, a much younger woman than I am now, she was very kind to me.”

“Thank you for telling me,” I said. “I hear that from so many people.”

I will never know all the ways my mother was kind. Here are three things I do remember, though, from when I was very young.

• She “saved” a drowning man at the lake at Chewacla State Park. He only thought he was drowning though. “He could’ve stood up,” she said, but he didn’t know it.

• She used to visit the “nursing home” when we were little, and she took Robert and me along. She befriended a man who had no legs. He lay on his stomach on a wheel-bed and propelled himself with his arms. He gave Robert and me paint-by-number paintings he had painted, framed in popsicle stick frames, and we hung our paintings in our rooms. I remember when he died. I don’t remember his name.

• We were on our way to dinner, sort of a big deal because we rarely went out to eat, and we came upon an accident involving a go-kart and a car. We pulled over and Mama rushed to the scene. She stayed with the mother of the kids in the accident for the rest of the night. Our dad took Robert and me home. I don’t remember what we ended up eating for dinner, but we didn’t go out.

My mother had a razor-sharp way of knowing and seeing, and could slice through a pile of bullshit in a stunningly clean swoop. She was funny and smart and talented.

I am so glad she was nice to the person I met yesterday. And I’m so glad the person told me.

WRITER NEWS

I have this thought from time to time. If I weren’t compelled to write, I’d have so much more time . . . and then the thought completes itself and sounds like this:

If I weren’t compelled to write, I’d have so much more time to write.

I had so many ideas for my column this week, and now that it’s time to sit down and write my column, I can’t find a single idea. Where did they go?

I do try to keep my website, marydansak.com, updated with writer news.

What are writer newsletters, anyway? Why am I writing one? I keep asking myself this, but then, I keep doing this. And I keep reading other people’s newsletters because I am a NOSY NELLIE. Why do you read newsletters, if you do?

EQUESTRIAN NEWS

Jasper was injured some time ago, and has just completed his sixty days of strict stall rest. He now graduates to a bit of turn-out time in the arena, starting with a few hours a day and working up to half the day by the end of the month.

He snuck in a few zoomies and bucks in the arena, and when I heard about it I called his name and told him to settle down, and I swear he looked at me exactly like a little kid would look at a mama. All innocent. No zoomies, no bucks. What was I even talking about?

Things at the ranch are on the move! We (yes, I use the royal WE) are up to twenty-one horses now, two who are still at roping school. I think we are turning into a roping enterprise. Alas, I cannot rope a lick, thanks to a chunk of bone that grows inward on my C6 vertebra. I am still paying for the one day of fifteen throws two months ago.

Granddaughters Ruby and Annabelle were here last week. Annabelle completed her first Junior Internship on the ranch! She worked with the Carolyn, the stable hand and Chanoah, the horse trainer, getting her hands dirty and her skills sharpened.

In a most exciting move, the “big arena” is getting a massive makeover.

Cows are mooing, Noel is growing up and looks pretty funny (Google’s AI identifies her as an elk, a moose, and a llama , but rarely a donkey). The heat is coming on, we ride less, sweat more, and talk about the afternoon storms from the comfort of the barn. Wildflowers are blooming.

NATURALIST NEWS

A box turtle laid its eggs in our driveway. There was no deterring her. We stared at her and asked her, “What the heck"?” but she ignored us, as egg-laying turtles do when laying eggs.

Joe kept going back to check on her all night. Hours and hours passed. She was still at it when we went to bed.

In the morning, we put a tomato cage over the nest and wrapped it in orange tape so no one will run over it. We’ll cover it with a cage to keep the predators out for the next forty-five days, with the expectation that the eggs will hatch in fifty to a hundred days.

Every single turtle feels desperately important, like the only turtle in the world.

Last year I transplanted may apples from an area near our driveway to a safer spot back in the yard by the rock we call “Turtle Rock.” Box turtles love the fruit of may apples, and I am hoping to lure them there. Still, we find box turtles near our driveway and door often. So we drive carefully, and count our blessings that we live on a planet with box turtles.

Thank you to everyone who left a review of Box Turtles, Hooligans, and Love, Sweet Love on Amazon. My review of my own book is still the only one on Goodreads. Do reviews matter? I don’t know. I try to leave them on every book I read. Correction: on every book I like. I don’t leave negative reviews.

LINK TO REVIEW BOX TURTLES, HOOLIGANS, AND LOVE SWEET LOVE

Have a beautiful weekend! May your heart be tender and your world kind, and may you have some time to yourself.