Yesterday morning I was in the lobby of the Holiday Inn in Ardmore, OK, checking to see if my Letter to the Editor had gotten in to the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer. The computer was so slow I had time to look out the bank of windows and see the vast blue skies of Oklahoma until the online Philly.com sprang into view.... with my letter, vastly truncated.
I'd jogged over from my balcony-side room in my shorts and long sleeve shirt but was simply freezing. Oklahoma's famous prairie winds were whipping up. In fact, when I called Scott later that morning, I sang into the phone: OKLA-HOMA where the winds come whipping down the plains. It was so windy that our rented Mazda hatchback swerved dangerously on the Interstate! Natives know not to drive the Interstate when wind warnings come in but use the backroads.
The state is well prepared for tornado emergencies. Our hotel had a sign pointing to the Storm Shelter. A series of piercing sirens tell of the coming of the winds.
Oklahoma means "red people" in the Choctaw language.
In my Mead composition notebook, I took down the phone numbers and email addresses of my new Oklahoma kin who you might say adopted me and vice-versa. When I came back home to Philadelphia I found myself speaking - in my head - in an Oklahoma drawl. I really like those folks. Donna, the wife of my ex, and I really bonded. I hope that man knew how lucky he was to have her as his wife.
Can you believe I was hanging out with cattle ranchers? I was in my glory. My daughter made a face when I said I fantasized living down there on the ranch. It's like this. You sit on the patio in those metal chairs they have. Those metal chairs that rock slightly when you sit down. You make yourself comfortable and put your drink down on the cement. After the funeral Sarah made Mike's favorite drink - mohitos - rum and lemons and club soda. My, it was tasty and went down smooth. I got a nice little buzz. I'm not a drinker but hey, your ex-husband only dies once.
His brother Joe and I went out to see the cattle. They were about 100 yards away from the patio. He brought his drink with him but I left mine behind. He held open the barbed wire fence with his foot and hand and I scurried through, then did the same for him. We walked toward the cattle, maybe 15 or so of them including a few black bulls. They are ever so curious and stopped grazing so they could look up at us with their kind faces. You did wanna go over and pet them but thought better of it.
Later, we'd tour the 80 acres with family members who proudly showed us around. The dozens of oil derricks on the property are owned by oil companies. The derricks are constantly bowing up and down, up and down, to dig for oil. No rancher is allowed to own mineral rights.
I said to Lou, one of the family members, how come there's all these old cars and trucks and tractors that always sits on the lands of farmers.
They're monuments, said Lou. We don't throw them away because we love them and want to keep them. I thought that was neat and wondered how my old brown Ford LTD would look sitting on my front lawn.
Every single morning in Oklahoma, I did my back exercises and visited the Fitness Room. I carried two-pound weights around the room and did exercises Scott showed me. "Look at those muscles you have," he's fond of saying. I think what he really means is, "Look at those flabby arms!"
Under Donna's tutelage, my former husband matured beautifully and fulfilled much of his potential, which is what we all want to do as a human being. Here's the obit written in the Ardmoreite. Although Mike and Donna lived in a suburb of Oklahoma City, the funeral was 90 miles away in the cattle-ranching town where Donna's family has tilled the soil for two generations. They're hoping to keep it going for as long as they can.
