Nancy Bartholomew

When I read a new book I want to be transported.  I want to step inside the pages and disappear from everything and everyone I know.  I want to absorb a new world- like water soaked up by a sponge.

Okay- you get me on that?

On a good day, that's what it's like at the nursing home.  I slip inside the realities of my patients, try on the world as they see it and for a few hours, I travel...content to coast along in someone else's life.

This is not something I can do with all of my people.  It is not always appropriate.  Sometimes I have to fix things, or wage war against abuse and neglect.  Sometimes people need more from me than just a good ear and a dose of understanding.  But there is always someone who just wants to tell their story, to know they've been heard and valued before their life is over.

Today was full of travels and stories.  

Today I lived in the mountains of Northwestern N.C, over 90 years ago.  My daddy could roam the mountains for days on end and never get lost.  He could look at a mountain, size up and price the trees for lumber and then walk back down into town and hire a crew.  They'd come, with their horses and carts, to cut the trees, haul them out of the woods, and push them down into the river where they'd float to the receiving crew on the other end.  They did this without clear cutting, without hurting any of the younger trees and without savaging the land. 

My sisters and I walked three miles to school every day, unless we were lucky enough to catch the train that went 4 miles into West Jefferson, the closest town to where we lived.  On those days we only had to trudge a mile backward, up the mountain to our one room schoolhouse.  Mama made us lunch buckets full of sweet milk and cornbread and we'd stick them in the spring outside before we went inside to join the others.

Home was a two-room log cabin shared with my 6 brothers and sisters.  I didn't even know where babies came from until I was almost grown.  Daddy would just send us out to play and when we came home, there'd be a new baby in Mama's arms.  The midwife would come up from town to see to Mama, cause there wasn't a doctor, not where we lived.

Down the hallway, I stepped into another, darker reality...

"There are bad people all around and sometimes at night, they try to kill me.  Oh not with a weapon," my patient hastily assures me, too savvy to the commitment laws to risk hospitalization.  "They use their minds."

A while later I walk in to meet a 99 year old, new lady.

"Who told you I was depressed?" she huffs.  "The doctor? Why that man doesn't do more than stand in my doorway barking questions! He doesn't know me!"

And he doesn't.  

He doesn't know about growing up on a plantation.  About the black cemetery with graves covered in crockery and dishes.  "They used to put their belongings on top of the graves," Yevette tells me. "Because they didn't have headstones."  She tells me about the books her mother read to her, the recitation contest she won for "Mrs. Smart Learns to Skate." She rummages through her drawers looking for the medal she won and can't find it.  She tells me about the books she loves and how stupid "Balloon Aerobics" is but says she plays it anyway because "It keeps me limber."  

I listen to her memories, grin when she says "I haven't told anyone about these things.  You know, all of this, it's going to be lost, these long ago things, and people won't know how it used to be."

We both nod sadly at this.

"You know," I tell her.  "That doctor is full of junk.  There is nothing wrong with you.  But I would hate it if I couldn't keep coming back to hear your memories.  Would you mind if I visited again?"

She cackles.  "I'd be delighted to talk to you again!"

I feel sorry for the doctor.  He really missed out.  Definitely not a book lover or a writer, I think.  No writer could walk away from this kind of treasure.   

"I have so many things I wonder about," the old lady muses, half to herself.

"Like what?"

"Like my mother," Yevette says.  "We lived in the middle of nowhere and yet she had hundreds of children's books.  Where did they all come from?"  She shakes her head slowly.  "I'll never know the answer to that.  It's lost in the past."

We both sigh, thinking of all the things we'll never know about what used to be or what could have been.  

I asked her what she thought was the secret to living such a long life and she shook her head and said she had no idea.  "It didn't run in my family.  They all died in their 80s."

But I think I know- it's her curiosity.  There is always something that interests Yevette, always something to wonder about and explore. 

"Life is a choice," she tells me.  "You can either have a bad one or a good one.  It's all up to you."