Pictures in the Sky By Kathleen Meadows

  

As a young child living on a 3-acre farm in the lower San Joaquin Valley, I would spend long days lying in alfalfa fields, the pungent aroma filling my senses as I gazed up at the sky. At dawn it would be pink and gold, sometimes cyan-blue at midday, deepening to violet at nightfall. I would pretend I was an astronomer studying the skies, try to imagine stories as I scanned my celestial hideaway. I remember wanting to describe my feelings so everyone would know what it was like to watch stars move, or clouds morph into unsheared sheep, or even the sensation of mud squishing between my toes as I hopped back to our small clapboard house with the wrap-around porch.

 

My imagination only became more intense as I grew older. I could scarcely wait for the dented yellow school bus to drop me off so I could race home to make a secret fort out of eucalyptus branches, or watch the Angus bull mating one of our favorite Guernsey cows (a forbidden activity!)Holidays were extraordinary events; for me they became visions. 

I would see Santa’s silhouette, hear his reindeer hooves tracking across the rooftop on Christmas Eve--ignoring my older sister’s scoffing that it was only our dad dressed up, carrying a gunny sack. Little did I realize that my father, at 38, was slowly dying of intestinal cancer. I was too young, not allowed to know. I could still run out to the barn with him before dawn, bring in the frothy milk, warm as it sloshed over the galvanized bucket onto my bare feet, wait patiently as he handed me bottles to feed our newborn lambs, their sucking mouths so powerful I’d have to hold on tight with both hands. Those years everything was exciting and visceral. The truth was kept from me even as my father gradually grew thin and pale, visits to the doctors even more frequent.

 

We left our beloved homestead after my mother miscarried, moved into a tract house in the suburbs. My father began teaching agriculture at the local college, wearing colostomy bags strapped under his workpants. Our backyard oil drum became an incinerator for syringes and dressings. After eleven operations and two resuscitations, he remained optimistic, though now entirely bedridden. At 13, I was vigilant, sitting at his side sharing books, sporting news, stories of our life left behind on the farm—until the nurse would appear with the morphine-filled hypodermic needle. He died that April; he was 45. I found myself staring into an abyss of loneliness, filled only by written words. I read until I couldn’t see, stumbled through class clutching my memories and my stories.

 

Teen life was spent in escape—hours bent over the piano (not doing any justice to Rustle of Spring or the syncopated jazz of Beiderbecke), discovering Buddhism and Taoism, wandering in silent search for meaning. On my mother’s urging to clean my room, I found a faded red diary I had started at my father’s bedside. I opened the speckled lock to read, to continue my pain in words. But no ideas came, no stories formed. On wet pages I saw something unexpected—images! I saw the morning light over our barn right before dawn, the way the tall sunflowers drooped backwards on hot days; the flood of sensations—the feel of briars when I fell off my horse, the prick of sharp cotton bolls on my fingers, the smell and taste of alfalfa. I recall feeling so free. I wanted that moment to last forever.

 

When I entered grad school at UC Berkeley I had decided to become an English teacher, inspired to work in inner city schools. I started writing about my summer experiences in a housing project---how the kids had never been to a municipal pool, slept in a tent or eaten s’mores over a campfire. In return, they shared their stories with me--howthe sound of gunshots at night would keep them awake, where drugs “went down,” or how funerals could be as frequent as birthday celebrations. I gave these stories to my supervisor who encouraged me to continue to reach out to these kids, to grow hope and help create meaningful goals.  

 

Years later, after becoming a teacher in San Francisco, I noticed a sad girl in the middle of my class. She had lost her mother and I could see the same lost look I had felt years ago. I encouraged her to write, to first visualize her thoughts then put them down on paper, without regard for punctuation. She did, later becoming a known author who gratefully mentioned me in her book. I felt this was reasonenough to have chosen this profession. But, rewarding as teaching was, it was also a highly stressful job— accompanied by a grueling commute. As the years progressed, I suddenly found myself an overworked and exhausted mother of three, juggling school and home, alone. 

 

Two divorces and countless miles of reflection later, I held onto the shining resilience of hope. After four decades in the classroom I finally retired and ventured into a brand new life of challenges: writing classes at night, poetry salons, belly dancing rehearsals, Chopin on my old Yamaha, and Chinese brush painting. But it was the raw poetry of sight and sound, the music of words, thatwouldn’t let go. From my deck in the East Bay hills, I am still inspired watching the changing skylights—the pink hues of dawn to the purple shadows of dusk. 

 

Looking back, it’s not been an easy journey--a single mother raising a son and two daughters (all educators). But the hard part has been to become reacquainted with my inner spirit; it has taken some time, along with some pain. I have found strength through my struggle, reawakening my desire to revisit those clouds and stars of my childhood. Now each time I pick up a journal, I see a new opportunity to create that sense of wonder first evoked by those pictures in the sky.

Kathleen Meadows, poet, memoirist, artist and belly dancer, lives in the El Cerrito Hills
overlooking the San Francisco Bay. A teacher of many years, she has taught in schools
throughout the Bay Area. Growing up in the rural San Joaquin Valley, her experiences inform
both her writing and her passion for drawing wildlife. Her poem The Changing Light recently
appeared in the anthology Wayfinding (Finishing Line Press, 2021).