A message from Pat
Dear editor:
A number of you wonderful Arkansans have called urging me to write the editor and let everyone know what happened to me. I had a bad fall, and my children thought I should be closer to them. So I was brought here, kicking and screaming, to a rural Texas area called Cedar Creek, southeast of Austin. The brain scan showed no brain (just kidding!), no serious damage, at least, just a hematoma and two big goose-eggs on my head, and bruises still on my face after eight months.
Patti, my lovely daughter, fixed up a nice double-wide for me so I am comfortable, and therapists come twice a week, one for a hip and another for arms — I have no rotator cuffs in either shoulder. Really. If I can’t play piano again God may as well take me on home — my piano has been my life — my education, my challenges (with names like Chopin, Schumann, Tchaikovsky!); piano was the way I supported my kids, as well as a source of worship and occasional therapy.
I really miss my home and friends. I’ve lived all over the US and the Middle East and I’m here to tell you that Arkansas has everything other places have — more than some! Especially Lake Ouachita! It is “our” family’s lake. My dad drove me and my first baby (now in his 60s) out to see how the Lake was filling right up the road. Many decades later Dan and our sons did some diving and found lots of interesting things on a big farm which had been flooded. I remember their excitement the day they came up and said they had found the farm’s well!
I’ve been trying to find things that Texas has better or bigger than ours. More wide-open spaces, for sure, and flies! Huge flies! Maybe that’s because our neighbors have horses.
There have been some interesting politics, yes? Have you, my liberal friends who enjoyed throwing mud at me in years gone by, learned to appreciate a president who keeps his promises? I’ve not watched a movie or a soap opera in at least two years because the Libs in Congress keep me mesmerized. Pelosi — attributing Divinity to the gang who leaves the mutilated bodies of teenage girls for their parents to find, some whose faces are so chopped up they can scarcely identify them. The only problem I have with the president calling them “animals” is that even though I was raised on a farm with all kinds of animals, and have interacted with many wild animals, I cannot think of any animal that would kill and mutilate as do those monsters.
Call me! I have an extra bedroom and would enjoy visiting with someone from home — Arkansas! Come on down! Meanwhile, I’ll try to heed the advice of the great Apostle Paul, who said he was determined to be content in whatever state he was in — does that mean even the state of Texas?