Notes on a Cowslip

Notes on a Cowslip Flower

         The cowslip flower is also known as the English primrose, or the marsh marigold. It is small and delicate, with fragrant yellow flowers. My definition is, those pretty little flowers lining the path from our house to Indian Jim’s house. I could see our house from his, and vice versa, so technically I was never out of sight or earshot of my mother, but it never mattered. The sun only really rose when Indian Jim came to fetch me and flowers only had the names he gave them, anyway.

         Increasingly of late, and as time marches inexorably along its predetermined course, I am reminded of bits and pieces of my childhood. Maybe it’s the startlingly adult conversations and imminent departure of my 17 year old as she embarks on her adulthood or the nostalgia generated from the sight and smell of my 7 year old daughter’s long chestnut hair as she runs giggling down the hallway, fleeing my tickle fingers. It could be that I see my own future in the death of my grandmother, and the slow and gentle aging of my mother, two women whose wills and wants have shaped me into the woman and mother that I have become. The underlying currents and eddies in the relationships of mothers and daughters can be as dangerous as riptides in the ocean, hidden but deadly, or as still and tranquil as a becalmed sea, peaceful and soothing.

         My mother, having become one at such a young age, learned to hone her already wide independent streak in a hurry once I came along. At sixteen, she flouted the advice of her elders and decided to keep her unwanted, surprise baby. A few acrimonious months later, my handsome and wildly irresponsible 19 year old father deserted my young mother and it was just the two of us. She was what my grandma would call “man-shy” after that. Mother was, and remains, a very attractive woman with dark hair and eyes, a lovely olive complexion, and a slender figure that was deceptively strong. Men flocked to her like bees to a queen, but once I was born she had no time for any of them, which I consider a rare attribute in a teenage girl regardless of her motherhood status.

         In spite of my grandmother’s objections, my mom moved us into a quaint little trailer house in Jackson County, nestled in the Pacific Northwest in the jewel green state of Oregon, about thirty miles away from grandma’s more metropolitan living quarters. Perhaps that was purposeful of my mother, part of the sea in their mother-daughter relationship. We lived on about an acre, and had a nice little creek flowing through the front yard. Even now I remember sitting at that creek with my little fishing pole, and my mom with her pole, while she taught me how to read. With perfect clarity, I remember the first time I sounded the word “blue” aloud and her resounding “very good job!” in response to my labored efforts. I was about three years old the day that happened. I couldn’t wait to tell Indian Jim about it, for he had taught me that the color blue smelled like water and that is how I would remember its letters. And sure enough, he was right, because sitting there by that creek and smelling the word blue made its letters known to me and revealed its secret sound forever.

         When we moved into our little trailer house, there was only one other dwelling in sight other than the outbuildings necessary to house and care for livestock. Another little trailer, a faded yellow color with a sagging wooden porch built on, lay nestled just down a flower lined path from our house. The property down the lane was taken up with many odd little fenced in areas that housed various goats of various colors and sizes. The other side contained a very large vegetable garden, and in my memory’s eye, was surrounded on all sides by sunflowers dancing in the breeze.

         Mom tells me it was the very same day we moved in to that little trailer house that a very tall Native American man came loping down the lane from his trailer to ours. He introduced himself, saying, “Please let me know if I can be helpful,” and, “Please help yourself to anything in the garden, there is too much for me to use alone,” and, “By the way, my name is Jim Running Deer but everyone just calls me Indian Jim.”

         Indian Jim was a very tall, rangy man with a long black braid down his back and gleaming copper skin. I will forever remember him in dark navy work pants, white t-shirt, and a blue denim overshirt, always unbuttoned like a jacket. As I grew up, he would come up the path from his house after a day of working as a mechanic, and bellow in a deep, rich voice to my mother “I’m stealing the baby! Dee! I am stealing the child!” to which she would laugh and I would giggle. I was delighted to be stolen, nay I waited and prayed to butterflies (insects of All That Is Good) to bring Jim up the path quickly every day. He would hoist my little self onto his giant shoulder and hold me steady. Always, he would say “hold on tight, don’t fall down” and I would hold onto his long braid like a rein. And off we went.

         Mom tells me that one of her fondest memories of the two of us is watching our receding backs go down the trail to discover new things in nature, from the names of the clouds as we lay on our backs in the meadow to the names of the flowers along the paths. Indian Jim knew all the names for flowers, birds, insects, animals, clouds, and the rays of sunshine. I spent my days with him convinced that he was the sunshine. He once told me about the flower that lined the path from my house to his house and said it was called a cowslip flower. He said it was called that because cows liked to take the petals and use them as slips of paper to write down things they wanted to remember. I was enchanted, bespelled, by the idea that animals could do such things when humans weren’t looking. I have loved the common cowslip flower all of my life because of the magic Indian Jim gave the unassuming blossoms.

         For all the time we spent together during my formative years, I never knew of the demons that plagued Indian Jim in his private life. As I mentioned, my mom was not looking for any kind of romantic entanglement after the fiasco with my father. Though she never said anything bad about my father in front of me, I know his betrayal must have tasted like bitter ashes in her mouth and turned her away from letting her heart loose into the world for quite some time. And for all that Indian Jim was eleven years her senior, maybe things would have been different had Indian Jim not been a severe alcoholic. At some point during my infancy, mom must have made it pretty plain that a.) she wasn’t interested romantically, and b.) absolutely no drinking around the baby. Indian Jim had his own hodgepodge of religious and personal beliefs patched together from various tribal lore, though his ancestry was half Navajo and half Sioux. He believed everyone was put on earth to meet one special person for their mate; like the wolf, he believed people should mate for life. He didn’t preach it, but it helped put my young mother’s mind at ease about his intentions toward her since he made it clear after peering into her eyes for several long moments that, while she was an attractive woman and very strong, she was not his soul mate. Mother was bemused by his proclamation. And by the almost comical way his giant hands cradled her small daughter, while he crooned half-remembered Navajo lullabies to her. He used his the end of his long braid to tickle the child’s nose and make her grin, and brought fresh goat’s milk to ease her hunger pangs when formula could not feed her.

         In those times, the world was less dangerous than it is now. An unsolicited and seemingly intense interest in someone else’s child is now the harbinger of very dark deeds; children are taught young to avoid strangers, they do not play outside alone, and yet still many of them suffer unspeakably, anyway. But mom says, “I never even thought about it, is that terrible? I just knew, somehow, you were safe with him.”

         And after that it was never a question: Indian Jim became like a father to me. He became My Indian, Jim. I suppose the youth of my poor mother explains why she never made the connection as to why I became so angry with her later on. But Indian Jim was the only father I ever knew until the day I asked her why she and my father did not live together; I asked if they did not live together because of Indian Jim’s terrible goat Snoid. I suppose I was about four years old around that time. She sat me down at the kitchen table and handed me a piece of fried bread with cinnamon and sugar (a recipe from our own Native American ancestry). “ChrissyBell,” she used Indian Jim’s nickname for me, “Indian Jim is not your father. Your father was named Dennis, and mommy and daddy were very young when we had you, and daddy couldn’t take care of you and mommy so he went away,” she said softly but without emotion. How much it must have cost her to say those words to me; as a mother, I feel her heart breaking from the depths of time. And oh, I was angry! What did she mean, Indian Jim was not my father! He was all I knew, all I could ever remember! Of course he was my father, she had to be wrong.

         But later when Indian Jim came for me, so we could go play with the goats and chickens at his house, there was whispered conversation and Indian Jim left the house without me. I fled to my room and cried until I fell asleep, because in all my life that I could remember, never had he left me. And I knew it was my mother’s fault.

         I woke up late that afternoon toward dusk, with the light falling aslant into my room in odd angles. Indian Jim was sitting on the foot of my bed, and he watched me closely as I swam through the murky depths of sleepy childhood.
         “I am not your father, ChrissyBell,” he said, “but I love you as if you were my own little daughter.” To which, of course, I flung myself at him and squeezed him tightly. And things went back the way they were, on the surface. We still had our afternoon walks back and forth between houses, where I learned the difference between a Monarch butterfly and a Swallowtail, a Yellowjacket and a Bumble Bee, and the Cowbell and the Cowslip flowers. But inside of my child’s heart, I knew. And I wished mightily I could change what was.

         We three went along on our little path, our odd family unit working smoothly while I wished on every evening star for the impossible. Shortly after the revelation, Mom, Indian Jim, and I visited a couple of friends, who lived way back in the mountains past the Applegate River. That’s where my fearless mother crawled into the den of a hybrid wolf mother and dragged out two of her cubs, one of which promptly bit her on the rear end. Indian Jim and I had a good laugh about that; I remember him leaned over with his big hands on his knees, shaking with mirth and when he lifted his head he had tears streaming down his face. “You better keep that one, Dee, he likes you,” Indian Jim told her and resumed his quiet quaking mirth. And she did; a playmate, Indian Jim said, to keep me company while he worked on cars all day. “You teach him good, ChrissyBell, let him learn all the clouds and flowers, and make friends with butterflies too,” he told me. So during long summer days when Indian Jim was gone, I taught my puppy all the things he had taught me, and we grew up, together. And we waited for Indian Jim to come home.

         It was on just such a day when my mom called me to the kitchen table again, with ice cream this time, and fresh strawberries from (where else?) Indian Jim’s garden. She told me that she had gotten a new job in the city for a different veterinarian since Dr. Hannawalt was retiring, and that we would be moving closer to grandma so I could see her everyday and go swimming in her pool. “Won’t that be fun!?” she said. I was about six by this time, and I could see the writing on the wall now. “What about my Indian Jim? Is he coming too?” I asked her. Before she could answer, I jumped up from the table, spilling my ice cream, and ran all the way to Indian Jim’s house. But he was not there. He was still at work, I thought.

         I never got to say goodbye to my Indian, Jim. He did not return to his trailer over the next two days, though I mournfully haunted his house and grounds like a small, pathetic ghost. I tried in vain to write notes to him on the petals of the cowslip flowers but could never get the writing to fit the small petals. My puppy, now a dog, did his best to comfort me but I was inconsolable. I felt as though my father had been taken from me, and that it was my mother’s fault, taking from me that I which I wanted most in the world. Indian Jim was not only my father, my teacher, and my big best friend, but I felt that he was my protector too. Nothing bad would ever happen if he was around, but now he was gone.

         Throughout my remaining childhood and the teenage years, the mother-daughter relationship disintegrated faster and faster, like flower petals scattered into the tide. We spent wasted amounts of time fighting, and then more tragically wasted time not speaking, sometimes for years at a stretch. Our history towered between us, and all the terrible and unspeakable things that happened to me which were preventable, I felt, had Indian Jim been around to save me. But over time, I began to forget Indian Jim. It seems hard to imagine now that I have caught our story and set it down on something more substantial than flower petals, that I would ever forget such a looming magnificence in my young life.

         Gradually, my mom and I reconciled. The arrival of first the one granddaughter, and then ten years later the second, went far in aiding our reconciliation. Our ocean became calm, once again, as I entered adulthood and forgave my mother for her mistakes and began to make my own. One day over lunch, a rare treat in our busy lives, I said to her, “I have had this recurring dream since as far back as I can remember, has that ever happened to you?” She said no, but she had some strange dreams that she couldn’t remember when she woke up.

         “I have had this dream, off and on for years and years, of a very giant Indian man with the sun shining behind his shoulders, lifting me up to the sky and chanting the names of clouds,” I said to her. I watched her face drain of all color.

         “You remember that?” she asked. “I can’t believe you remember.”

         Naturally, I pressed for details, and the story of Indian Jim and ChrissyBell and the magic of cowslip flowers came tumbling from her. With each word, I remembered more and more of my special friend, my first and only real father. I pulled a small, gray, worn leather bag from my purse and set it on the table. The excitement of my remembrance faded into sorrow, and she slowly reached for the battered item and turned it over and over in her hands.

         “He was on his way to visit us, in our new house. We agreed that it was best that the two of you remain close; he was like a father to you. But Jim had a terrible problem with alcohol, and he had been drinking again after we moved away. He had been collecting things for you, though; his car was full of stuffed toys, books, and games for you to play together” my mom said, sotto voce.

         “The police said this was the only item I could give to you; the rest was unfit, now, to give to a child, they said. This was in his pocket and had your name sewn on the front of it. ChrissyBell. I picked the embroidery off so you wouldn’t know it was from him, and I left it in your room the night he died. I’m so sorry I never told you.”

         “I always knew it was from him, I think,” I told her, tears tracing salty tracks down my cheeks. I remembered so much now, it was flooding back in painful torrents, bittersweet with this knowledge. “Did you look inside?” I asked her.

         She shook her head, no, she had never opened it. I carefully untied the knot in the frayed and aged leather cord, and opened the drawstring bag carefully. I poured the contents into my hand and held it up for her inspection.

         In my palm lay a perfect yellow cowslip blossom, preserved forever in glass. Upon each petal, inscribed in inky black script, were the words “I love you”, repeated over and over.

         I still dream about Indian Jim.