Ardis. Diary

 I can't bear it!!  How will I continue to put one foot after another and keep walking towards the unknown without my husband?  I married Tom because of a promise that he made to my parents as they lay dying.  I love Tom, but not in the magical feelings of romance novels that I read.  I sneaked those books into the barn and read.  My parents would have been scandalized.  Just watching my parents relationship showed me how a marriage should be.  They were absolutely besotted with another.  I think they both died because they simply couldn't imagine any life without the other.  They had known each other for most of their lives.  They came to Tennessee as a newly married couple.  The only asset they carried with them was their love for each other and ten dollars.   

My mother told me that I would grow to love Tom.  Tom and I are so very different.  He is reserved. I am not. He has very definite opinions about a few things, but simply isn't even curious about anything else.  Our conversations are thence extremely limited.  I must admit that one of his favorite subjects bores me to tears.  Oh how he loves discussing the best types of seeds for the best harvest rewards.  He studies the soil obsessively.  

The only time that I found this interesting conversation was one time when he was plowing and dug up a beautiful statue.  It was carved from stone.  He gave the statue to me.  I treasure it.  It has a woman kneeling looking up towards the heaven that she is imploring.  

Tom simply said, "She's probably praying to some heathen God."  I don't believe in Tom's limited judgmental God.  His God only recognizes the pious Christian.  I was taught that even if we call our God a different name, chances are that we are still praying to the same Father in Heaven.  I was also taught that we are all brothers and sisters, children of the same God.  Tom is biased against anybody that is a different color, a different religion, or just plain different.  

I feel badly as I reread what I just wrote.  I'm going to now explain the things that endears Tom to me.  When my parents became desperately ill, Tom was at our home everyday doing all that he could to help me care for them.  He loved my parents as well as he loved his own flesh and blood.  When my parents died, I had nowhere to go, no family left, except in impossibly far away Scotland.  Somehow Tom convinced folks to watch over me for the last two years before I was old enough to marry him.  I often think that he married me out of a sense of duty to my dead parents more than any type of love.  Love is a most practical thing to Tom.  He cares for the duties of marriage in the same way that he cares for the duties of farm life.  I thought that lovemaking would be....well...more pleasurable.  Okay, no more of that conversation.  It makes me very uncomfortable. 

When I discovered that Tom was actually leaving to go fight in a war that has nothing to do with us?  I was furious.  Then I was desperate.  Finally I gave up.  Tom is the most determined human that I've ever met.  In other words stubborn!  He drives me crazy sometimes with his unwillingness to be flexible or see anything from other than one viewpoint.  Sigh.

I did realize that I do love Tom when I realized that I may never see him again.  He could actually fight and die in this dreadful war.  I can't believe that anybody thinks that it's acceptable to own another human, regardless of their skin color.  They have the same emotions, the same bodies, their skin is just a prettier color.  Tom and I do share this belief.  We think that it's unconscionable to profit from the sweat and labor of others with no remuneration.  

Tom has spent his life listening to tales of brave Scottish warriors.  His dad told him bedtime stories from Scottish history.  I fear that Tom went to sleep with battles painting the colors of his dreams.  This influence drives him to the idea that war is glorious.  Warriors are men that face their fears with bravery.  Oh Tom, why did you have to leave?

I'm beyond weary and tomorrow I will have to get up at the dawn of the new day.  I'm alone now under the wagon.  I start at every howl of coyotes or wolves.  I have a lamp here with me.  I must blow it out.  I fear that I'm being greedy with my use of our limited kerosene.  Good night.

My Sheros

Ardis, Sarah, Celeste, Angela, Rose, Lily, Beth, Tapestry.  These are the names of my seven Sheros.  Each book is stand alone, except for Tapestry.  A tapestry is a wall hanging made by weaving threads in and out to create a lovely picture.  I am doing the same thing in a literary fashion.  Tapestry will finish smoothing out the rough edges of my series.

Journal entries for all of the women will be posted on this blog.  This will help you to peek into the coming attractions of my series.  Each of the women named above will have their own book in the series.  I did not write my series in a chronological order.  I am a rather random writer.  I first began a book that I'm just now getting around to publishing.  Her story intrigued me and began first one book, then two, then three, on and on to eight.

I have published two books, Beth, and Celeste, of the Drifting Anchor Ranch.  You can see above that they were not written in chronological order.  I'm now working to rectify that.

I'm excited for everyone to meet Ardis, a lovely pioneer woman who travels from Tennessee to Calkington only to find that the land they had purchased was in the middle of the Columbia river.  She travels with a new husband and his family.  Her husband is excited by the idea of fighting in the American Civil War which breaks out shortly after they begin their journey.  He leaves, and Ardis travels on with her in-laws.  Shortly before they reach their goal, all of Ardis' family drowns in a rushing river.

Sarah is a Native American.  She is The Leader of The People, a tribe that lives on the top of Meleshe, a mountain top.  To protect their value system they are a closed society.  I have created some language for this group.  It exists only in my head.  It has been very enjoyable to design a vocal method of communication.

Please stay tuned for coming attractions. 

Celeste's Journal

Sunshine filled my soul and the day.  It's marvelous to sit in my sewing shop and design and sew dresses.  I actually wore a sweater as I went about my work yesterday.  It's June but the weather in our small town never gets very hot.

Lucille Bond came in today with her three girls, Willy, Bertie, and Alexa.  Lucille once told me that she had thought all three of them were going to be sons.  She only had boy names chosen for them.  The oldest would be Willard Jr., then Robert, and Alexander.  When they were born she shifted their male name to a female, Wilhelmina Elizabeth, Roberta Rae, and Alexandra Alice.  Personally, I think that she handled the situation in a very clever fashion.

Lucille told me about an organization in Astoria that she's involved with.  It's called The International Order of Good Templars.  It began in 1851 as an organization for temperance.  I remember the Dragon Lady, Madame LeRouge hated the entire idea.  Her customers liked a combination of drinking, and women.  Some of those men had been at sea for long periods of time.  This gave them a huge appetite for these activities.  I have never understood why a man who is completely drunk thought that made them better lovers.  Instead it made them clumsy and fumbling.

This is an organization that I will never join.  I stay as far away from that part of Astoria as I can.  I have no desire to remember my experiences in that town.  I'm happy to report that it does seem to be improving.  It still has a long way to go.

Astoria has been so wicked that men will walk up behind somebody in the daylight and knock them out.  They awaken only to find that they are miles out to sea.  Their poor family will not know what happened to them.  Sometimes it takes them as long as six years to return.  Sometimes they never return.  It's a horrifying thing to treat human beings as mere beasts of burden.

Lucille prides herself on being a model citizen.  Unfortunately, in her mind, that means that she has the right to judge everyone else.  Her feelings of insecurity drive her to judgement of others.  She lost her entire family coming to Calkington, and married at a very young age.  She had very little opportunity for education.  She taught herself to speak English in a more educated manner.  I will admit that I admire her discipline, and her many talents.  I know full well that she could be sewing beautiful clothes on her own.  Somehow it makes her feel better about herself to have someone else perform that assignment.  I'm grateful for her business.  I just wish that she didn't treat me so poorly.

I'm weary.  I hear sleep calling me.  Bonne nuit.

Ardis Journal

One of the few things that excited me about moving to Oregon is that it is almost brand new.  There is no history of slavery, or other types of bigotry.  Well, even as I write that I am aware that there will always be prejudice in this world.  Most of the time those opinions are passed down to us from our parents.

My parents were two of the most loving people that I have ever met.  They didn't care what color your skin was, if you needed help, they would help you.  I was very frightened because they harbored escaped slaves on many occasions.  It frightened me so much that they quit telling me when they were giving assistance.  Da built two secret spaces in the barn, and two in the house.  The highest number of slaves that they had at one time was a family of ten.  There was the ma and da and their eight children.  Their owner (I shudder to call anyone the owner of another human being), was going to sell them all to different places.  I was very proud of my parents for keeping that family together.

Now our country is divided, and part of the country is fighting the other part.  The main reason?  Slavery.  Many rich folks in the south would not stay rich if they had to do all their own labor.  Some plantations have hundreds of slaves.  I will never understand how anyone can go to another country and kidnap men, women, and children.  Then they chain them in horrific conditions in boats and take them thousands of miles away from everyone and everything that they know!  They beat them, starve them, and let them lie in their own waste.  Some of these evil men wouldn't treat their own dogs so poorly.

So very ugly.  I'm writing it in my journal because if I ever have any children I want them to understand from this parent, slavery is NEVER acceptable.  It will NEVER be acceptable to force another human being to do things against their will.  It is NEVER acceptable to split up families.  It is NEVER acceptable for men to rape women, and then actually keep their own flesh and blood, half white but half African as slaves.

I know about these atrocities because of the many people that my parents sheltered over the years.  The family that I spoke about before were not just running away because they were going to be sold.  They also ran away because the landowner had caught their fourteen year old daughter and raped her.  She was pregnant.  I can't imagine giving birth to a child that was the result of such an act of violence.  If they believe that these human beings are NOT human, or LESS than human, what does it make them when they force them to have intercourse with them?

Well my writing about this is making me sick at my stomach.  I'm going to think of something lovely for a moment.  I'm writing this in the back of the ranch house.  There is a fairly level field.  Blake and Red cleared out most of the trees and brush.  They left some lovely maples, aspen, and oak around the perimeters.  There is a small creek that is on one portion of the ranch.  It freezes in the winter.  Blake and Red went skating on it the winter before I arrived.  I hope that I can skate on it.  I adored skating on our pond when I was a kid.

Blake chose the loveliest land in this entire area to build his ranch.  I'm very grateful to Blake.  Without Blake I would have died with my entire family in that awful river.  Sometimes when I miss them all so very much I kind of wish that I HAD died with them.  Then I remember that life is very precious.  I do my family a disservice by being unappreciative of my life.

The sun is warm, and I'm feeling sleepy.  I'm going to take a little nap here in the soft grass.

Ardis Journal

Mother desperately wanted me to become a southern lady.  A gracious, soft-spoken, hospitable, serving, loving, Christian lady.  She sewed me a lovely dress to wear when I married Tom.  It had yards and yards of fabric in the skirt with a hoop skirt underneath.  I did wear it to marry Tom.  It now is packed away.  What earthly good would a fancy dress with a hoop skirt do me now?

To be honest, I was rather a lost cause at being trained to be lady like.  I'd rather ride a horse bareback than sit side saddle.  When ma would call me in to instruct me on cooking, I would hide in our old haystack.  She would finally tire of trying to call me.  She rarely complained that I didn't come when she called.  I think she understood that I didn't take easily to the domestic arts of homemaking. 

Ma and Da came from serious poverty.  They came to America to make a better life for them, but especially for me.  They longed to own a big plantation in Tuckaleechee Cove.

To really attain such wealth they would need slaves to work the fields, whether they grew cotton or other crops.  The three of us just couldn't produce enough to compete with the big plantation owners, especially since some of them had the head start of a home and land passed through generations.  My parents wouldn't even consider having a slave.  They believed that honest work must be done with their own hands.  They were certainly financially stable.  They owned their farm out right.  Sigh, once again I feel harsh thoughts toward Tom.  He sold my birthright without even speaking to me.  Sadly, we lost everything.  It does give me a small measure of comfort that the evil villain that robbed us of land and money is now in jail and will be there for a long time.

My wedding day was grand.  I managed to convince Tom's mother not to tie my corset so tightly that I could not breathe.  I still maintain that corsets were invented by men to keep us dominated, subverted.  The dress was lovely, bright, feminine.  I felt lovelier than I had ever felt before.  I even had been assiduous in treating my work roughed hands and face so that they were very soft.

I never wanted to be a boy.  I enjoy the types of outdoor work they do.  Gardening has always seemed like an excellent way to create.  To me it's a way to create beauty.   I've always like bright, shiny things, and pretty clothes.  I just also enjoy riding a horse, playing with our old dog Bright, and playing kick the can with Tom and the neighbor boys.  Sometimes I lose track of time when I sketch someone, or something.  My sketches of people are much better than my sketches of places.

I am grateful to state that most of the time I understand and like myself.  The good Lord has blessed me with gifts that I hope to use to his glory!

Ardis Journal

I have been knitting some hot pads.  Blake picked up a pan by the handle the other day and burned his hand quite severely.  I asked him why he would do anything so foolish.  His response was, "I don't have anything to hold the handle with."  Gratefully I have Mama's knitting needles, and lots of yarn as well.  I'm making a simple pattern.  I've heard it called the basket weave.  I decided that was a little too simple.  In the pattern I'm making I'm creating triangles in a square.

Mama could make anything.  She didn't need a pattern, or someone to show her how to make it.  It would just show up in her head, and it would be perfect each and every time.  She made me the most beautiful dresses.  I have out grown most of the gowns she made me.  The ones that still fit, well they were torn to shreds as we came from Tennessee to Oregon.

I have saved as many scraps as I could.  I'm going to sew them together to make a quilt for Tom and I to put on our bed.  I am trying to think in a positive manner.  Even though he has not written, I am certain that fighting in a war leaves very little time for letter writing.

Maybe some day, some time our child will put the quilt over their child, and mama, papa, Tom, and I will all live on.  I fear that I am in a melancholy mood this evening.  No matter how many times I try to reach for positive ideas, all that comes to mind are the deaths, the failures, the home that we left behind.

When Blake burned his hand, I did not speak a word to him.  I took him by the other hand and pulled him with me to the well.  I pulled up water.  Next I continued to pull him forward to the ice cellar.  I used the ice pick that is always kept there and chipped off some ice.  I put the ice in the bowl of water.  Next I sat Blake down and put his wounded hand in the cold water. 

Blake looked very surprised.  He said, "My mother always said that butter should be put on a burn.  I never understood.  Butter seemed to make my burns hurt worse."

I replied, my mother always put burns in very cold water as soon as they were burned.  She made us hold our burned anatomy in the cold until it began to feel better.  I was always amazed at how that simple action helped most burns to heal quickly.  Blake you just stay here until I send Red to fetch you.  I'll finish the meal and then we'll eat.  Blake didn't even bother to reply.  It was easy for me to see how the cold water relieved his pain.

Well I don't know that I cheered myself up much, but I'm so tired I'm going to try and sleep anyway.  Nightie night.
 

Ardis Journal

Rain is drumming on the ceiling over my head.  I'm ever so grateful to know that whatever Blake builds, he builds to outlast rain, snow, or wind.  Tonight the pounding is not soothing.  It just feels like the world is going backwards.  The Bible speaks about Noah and how wicked the people of his time were.  God washes away everybody but Noah, his family, and the creatures they take on the ark.  He gives those wicked folks many opportunities to repent, they won't listen.  I wonder right now, are we all as wicked here in this place that seems to be getting washed away?

Tonight I'm so tired and sad.  I remember strongly the final peace I felt when I was trapped in that creek.  I felt that death was close and I wasn't fighting any more.  I felt love, richer, fuller, than ever before.  It was a rude shock to be jerked back into living.

I believe that there is not an end to our essence, or spirit.  I have never doubted the existence of God, the Creator of heaven and earth and all that is in them.  I believe that he created this beautiful, harsh planet for us, his children, to live on, and learn from.

During the daytime I keep myself busy and push away these deeper philosophical thoughts and emotions.  It also helps me to sleep quicker and more deeply if I work hard.  I haven't been recording anything in this journal again for a long time.  I've tried on many nights.  I wind up tearing up the drab dreariness that falls off my pen onto the paper.

Blake Calkin is a very good man.  I worry, often, that people in the town will assume that he and I share more than a platonic friendship.  After all, so many men in this area have moved Indian women in with them.  They don't worry about the Christian ceremony of marriage.  Some of the men have more than one woman living with them, all of the women giving his children life.  Knowing these facts explains why some of these folks assume that is the situation with Blake and I.

I am eager for a white woman to move in somewhere close by.  I need to have a woman that I can share a place with. I hope that I can move away from this male dominated household. 

Blake is a wonderful, unselfish man.  He's well traveled, self-educated, and very thoughtful.  Nonetheless, writing this down makes me feel guilty.  After all, I have a husband, a man who deserves my loyalty, my allegiance. 

It is a very harsh thing to me is that I don't know if Tom is alive?  Sometimes I can't even remember what he looks like, except that he is considered very handsome.  To me, I miss a certain lack of imagination and mischief that never shows on that handsome face.  He is constant...and often I have found that very boring.  Now I'm feeling negative.  I'm going to try and sleep.