 
The Adventures of Miss Maybelle

by

Meredith Rae Morgan

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Meredith Morgan

All Rights Reserved

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## Chapter 1

The morning after Maybelle Dickens moved into her first apartment she woke at daybreak, and set out to explore her new surroundings.

Her Inner Old Woman kept whining that she had a big day yesterday and she should take it easy and rest. Maybelle told the Old Woman to shut the hell up. She tied her hiking boots, slung a backpack containing several bottles of water and some snacks across one shoulder and a camera bag across the other, clipped her GPS on her waistband, picked up her walking stick and headed across the field behind the house toward the mountains.

Her landlady came running out of the back door on her side of the duplex, waving her arms and shouting, "Miss Maybelle, where are you going? Don't go that way!"

Maybelle stopped and waited for Felicia to catch up. "I won't get lost. I have my GPS with me. See, I've got the coordinates of your house, so I can always get back here."

"But what if you fall?"

Maybelle pointed to a red button on the GPS, "That's my super-high-tech, bad-ass mother of all medic alerts. It bounces an SOS off the satellite and alerts the authorities if I need help and also tells them where I am, to within a few yards. Cool, huh?" She patted Felicia's hand and added, "I'll be fine, dear. You go on to church and say a little prayer for me, if it'll make you feel better."

Maybelle turned and headed toward the mountains. After a few minutes, she sneaked a peak back towards the house and saw that Felicia was still standing in the yard watching her, looking perturbed. Maybelle waved and then hurried away toward the mountains. For a minute, she felt a little apprehensive. She had rented an apartment in this nice lady's home and asked her to include one hot meal a day. Maybelle knew that arrangement would pose a challenge for both of the women, for very different reasons.

Felicia Brotherton was a very nice Southern lady, in her late fifties, who would cluck over Maybelle and try to feed her the greasy, heavy food for which Southern cooks are famous, but which Maybelle didn't eat. She would more than likely butt into Maybelle's business, which Maybelle knew she would hate. Maybelle knew a lot of women like Felicia and she had a general idea of what would be expected of her as a tenant. She was anything but confident she would be able to deliver.

Maybelle was pretty sure Felicia had never met anyone like her before. She was positive that Felicia had no clue what she was in store for her. Even though Maybelle was determined to be on her best behavior with the nice people of Mountain View, North Carolina, she knew that she would pose a challenge to Felicia on a daily basis.

Maybelle shook her head in an effort to brush away those thoughts. There would be plenty of time to deal with all that interpersonal crap later. Right now she had a backyard full of mountains to photograph and she didn't intend to waste another minute lolly-gagging around.

She walked for a couple of hours and took dozens of pictures. Because of the rough terrain and overgrowth, she didn't make much forward progress, only about four miles round trip, but she learned some things about the area and she mapped out a general plan for future exploration. Before returning home, she sat on a split rail fence about a half mile or so away from the house and drank her last bottle of water while munching a power bar, soaking in the beauty of the setting. She was the picture of serenity – that is, if one didn't look close enough to see the fear that glittered in the back of her eyes. She treated her nerves with deep breathing and focused concentration on the clean smell of the air and the birdsong. This business of being old and alone in a new place was more frightening than all of the other crazy things Maybelle had done combined.

Eventually, she returned to the house where she took a bath and decided it was time to make the apartment her own.

The crowd at the diner had told her that most folks in the town thought the division of the house was kind of crazy. Maybelle had spent only one night in the place, but she understood that the division of the old Victorian home into two apartments had been carefully planned by someone who knew and loved the house, preserving all its best features. Leaving aside the inappropriateness of a the apartment for a 75 year old lady, Maybelle loved it from the moment she set foot in it.

The first thing she needed to do was to create her reading and writing nook. She didn't want to put it upstairs in the bedroom. Spending that much time in the bedroom would be too much like the thousands of hotel rooms she had worked from over the years. She decided to make her nest in the kitchen. It was appointed with a small sink that had a washing tub and a rinsing tub so small it almost looked like a child's toy, a two-burner hot plate and a toaster oven on a shelf, with a microwave oven on a small cabinet beneath them and an apartment-sized refrigerator next to that. A pine table with two chairs hugged the wall opposite the sink. It reminded her of a ship's galley, and she loved it.

She opened the wooden door that led to the back yard. The glass storm door framed a spectacular view of the yard, a meadow, and the incredible mountains beyond. She fetched a tape measure from her camera bag and did some quick calculations. She rearranged the kitchen enough to make room to drag a club chair and an ottoman from the parlor, and set them in front of the door. She set her laptop on the ottoman where it would always be handy. Thus, she created a special place, where she would spend many hours every day for as long as she stayed in that apartment.

After that, she checked her email, sending off greetings to her various siblings, nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, plus some of the friends and "adopted family" she had collected over the years – at least the ones who hadn't either died or decided that being her friend was too exhausting. Then, she stared at the computer for a few minutes as though it were a rattlesnake. She sighed, went to the kitchen, poured a glass of milk. Returning to her chair, she set her laptop across her knees, took a sip of her milk and opened her word processing software.

She had fiddled around long enough. It was time to get down to business, so she started typing.

My family has been after me to write a memoir for a long time. I can take notes and make observations like crazy, and I can write pretty decent short articles about nature and the environment if I know I have a good copy-editor to back me up and fix my grammar and spelling, but I have no idea how to go about writing a memoir. Hell, I've never even read somebody else's memoir!

After Nikki, my English-professor niece, promised to proof-read my manuscript and fix it up, without ever telling anybody how bad it was to begin with, I finally agreed to try to write my story. The hardest part about doing this is that I have lived my entire life facing forward and I have trained myself to think about something else or to get busy with work whenever I was tempted to think about the past. My best friends know next to nothing about my background and absolutely nothing about my family. My family knows very little about my career or my friends, which is why they have been on my ass to write down my story.

Note to family: I just want you to know that this is much harder for me than you'll ever know and I wouldn't do it if I didn't love you all so much. I hope we don't _all_ regret it by the time I am finished!

I would rather not do this, but having thought about it for a while, I think this project will do me some good. In order for it to be of use to me, I have to be honest. I have led a fantastic life, and if I'm going to finally share my story with others, I'm going to tell the truth as I see it and in my own way without sanitizing it for the benefit of the more straight-laced members of the family or for the kiddies. I am pretty sure that parts of my story and a lot of my choice of words might not go over real big with some of my family. If blue language and some kind of unusual personal relationships might offend you, stop reading now.

The only way I know how to tell a story is straight ahead and honest. I'm writing this because my family asked me to do it, but I intend to share it with the friends who are mentioned. They have the right to know what I said about them, and if I clean it up too much they'll call bullshit.

Okay. Mine has not been a G-rated life. Now, nobody can say they weren't warned in advance.

Last fall I came to North Carolina on a vacation and fell in love with the Smokey Mountains. I had already decided I didn't want to go back to Denver and, as much as I love my family, I know I can't live in Little Rock with the rest of the clan. Therefore, I decided to stick around in this area for a while. I talked my way (correction: I argued, badgered and bullied my way) into a job as a winter caretaker for a church camp up in the mountains. I know that after certain family members got finished throwing a fit about how stupid it was for and old broad like me to go off in the mountains for months alone, everybody figured that I'd come back down from the mountains in the springtime with my story all written out. I guess that was sort of what I had in mind at the time.

What I hadn't counted on was the fact that I wasn't alone up there in those mountains. I was surrounded by an amazing variety of wildlife, and all the activity going on around me was so fascinating, I couldn't take time to think about myself. Every morning I would sit down with my computer, intending to write about me, and then I would spend the next ten or twelve hours writing down, in minute detail, everything that was going on outside the window, and taking pictures, of course.

I ended up with dozens of pages of notes and hundreds of photos, mostly on the behavior of a pair of silver foxes who were my nearest neighbors. I sent my observations to a scientist I found on the Internet and he's weeding through my notes and pictures. He intends to publish a scientific article from my observations and agreed to give me credit in his article.

Playing naturalist all winter was my idea of fun, but, from my family's perspective, it meant I pissed away six months of time that I was supposed to use writing down the stuff about my life that they want to know, and a bunch of them got kind of irritated and basically told me I should get down to business and get this story on paper before I up and die, or words to that effect. I guess they have a point. I'm 75. I'm not going to live forever. It's time for me to quit farting around and get on with this project.

So, here goes...

A knock at the front door interrupted her. She put down her computer and answered the door. Felicia stood there smiling. "Dinner is ready, Miss Maybelle. You know you must get a phone."

"I have a cell phone. I'll give you the number, but it will be a long distance call. I hope that's not a problem." She laughed. "Maybe you should just beat on the wall when supper is ready."

She looked at her watch and shrugged. "Lord, I had no idea it was so late! I skipped lunch altogether." She looked sheepish. "I do that sometimes. I get so engrossed in what I'm doing, I totally forget to eat. Anyways, give me a second to go to the bathroom and wash my face and hands."

Felicia said, "I'll leave the front door open for you. Just come on in."

Maybelle said, "Honest, Miss Felicia, you don't have to feed me at your table. When I asked for you to include one meal a day, I really meant for you to just make me a plate."

"Maybe sometime we can do that, especially during the week if I have club meetings, but this is Sunday. I always make a big Sunday dinner even though, since Gordon died, usually I eat it alone. Let's sit down together and get acquainted."

Maybelle walked through Felicia's front door less than five minutes later and was greeted by the smells of chicken roasted with carrots, potatoes, and onions. She could tell that Felicia was shocked at how much she ate for such a skinny old woman, but Maybelle had walked a lot that day and she was hungry. She thought that Felicia could benefit from some more exercise and less biscuits with butter, but she kept her mouth shut for once in her life.

The women talked for an hour or so. It was more of an interview than an actual conversation. Maybelle peppered Felicia with questions about the local geography, history and residents of the town. Felicia answered the questions. When Felicia directed questions to Maybelle, she deflected them with vague non-answers or ignored them altogether, and resumed her query fusillade.

They had their first argument when it came time to wash the dishes. Felicia didn't want Maybelle to help with the dishes because she had paid for the meal.

Maybelle said, "That's bullshit! I paid you to cook the meal for me and put it on a plate. I didn't expect you to entertain me and serve me in your house, much less clean up after me. I'll help with the dishes when I eat at your house, or I'll go someplace else for my meals."

That did it. Maybelle could tell that Felicia loved the idea of having someone to cook for, and the threat of losing that opportunity (not to mention the extra $50 in her weekly food budget) caused her to back down. Maybelle washed the dishes and Felicia dried them and put them away.

When they were finished, Felicia asked Maybelle if she wanted to watch TV with her for a while. Maybelle shook her head and said, "No, thank you. I very rarely watch TV."

Felicia cocked her head to one side and asked, "What do you do with your time?"

Maybelle thought about that for a little too long. "I read a lot."

Felicia didn't look convinced that was a sufficient answer. Maybelle didn't feel convinced it was either, so she fled to her own apartment before Felicia could ask any follow-up questions.

It was still more than a half an hour before sunset. She dug her best camera out of her camera bag and sat on the back stoop. A family of deer grazed in the field just beyond Felicia's garden. The mountains were beginning to darken at their base and the clouds were beginning to pinken. She clicked a dozen or or more pictures as the shadows deepened and the colors changed.

Maybelle sat transfixed as the sun sank behind the mountain and then disappeared, plunging the world into sudden darkness. She loved that about sunsets in the mountains. There was no gloaming. It was daylight. Then it was dark. Just like that.

Next came the stars. She gazed up at curtains of stars that danced above her, some appeared almost close enough to touch. She leaned back against the porch railing and felt her panic loosening its hold on her heart, even if only a little. She had been alone most of her life, but she had always stayed on the move. Settling down in one spot was a frightening prospect. Scariest of all was the fact that she was so old and starting over in a new place. The Old Woman responded to that thought, snarling, _And whose fault is that? You coulda stayed in Arkansas where you'd never be alone for a minute!_

Soon she felt chilled and damp and then a bug bit her. It was time to go inside, but too early to go to bed, so she resumed her story.

## Chapter 2

I was born on a farm in the Ozarks near the Arkansas/Missouri state line. I guess the nearest town that anybody would know about is Branson, Missouri. As I understand it, Branson is now what one of my nieces calls Las Vegas for evangelical Christians, and is evidently quite a tourist attraction. I find that hard to believe, but I have no intention of going there to see for myself, because I've been to the real Las Vegas and would never go back, or visit anyplace "like" it, with or without the Christian component.

Anyway, I was born on the Arkansas side of the line, the oldest child of Orie and Etta Mae Dickens, in December 1934. Nobody knows my actual birth date. Neither Mama nor Papa could read or write and I was born in the middle of a snowstorm so they couldn't get out to call the doctor. It was a few weeks before anyone suggested they record my birth. They put it down that I was born on Christmas Eve because they had to put in a day and that seemed like it might be close.

The result of that was that it was easy for me to remember my birthday. It also made my birthday a festive occasion even though most of the time the people I was with had no idea it was my birthday.

Mama and Papa had five more kids after me, two before he went away to the War and three more after he came home in 1943. Papa came home from the war early because he was wounded in Italy and got a medical discharge. I never really knew what his injuries were, but they must have been really bad to get a medical discharge in the middle of World War II.

We were poor, but so was everybody else we knew. We sort of figured that everybody was kind of in the same boat, which made our poverty easier to tolerate. Papa kind of eked out a living farming a little and doing day-labor for other farmers. Mama took care of the house and grew a garden that provided most of our food. I remember that sometimes near the end of the winter when the canned goods she put up in the fall ran out, we sometimes went hungry. Mama often skipped meals to feed the little ones, and as I got older, she made me do with less when the food was running low. She said the littlest ones, who were growing so fast, and the boys, who worked in the fields with Papa, needed the most food.

My very early life is kind of lost in the mists. I refused to think about it at all for so long I think I all but forgot about most of it. I know my brothers and sisters want to know as much as I can remember. It isn't much.

As I recall, Mama was solely responsible for taking care of a slew of kids and a house with no help from anybody but us kids. Like all the mothers I knew of in the area, she was stern and she didn't hesitate to spank us, usually with a yardstick from the hardware store. She wasn't mean like some other women I heard about and she wasn't one of those snake-handling Bible beaters like our nearest neighbor who was just creepy. I think Mama was a good woman who loved us, but she didn't have time to sit around and spend what they call "quality time" with her kids. Feeding us and putting clothes on our backs was pretty much the extent of what she could manage. Somehow, Mama always made the house feel safe. Maybe not exactly warm and cozy, but safe. I came to understand later what a big accomplishment that was.

Papa wasn't around a lot that I remember. He worked long hours in the fields, and when he came home he ate dinner and usually went to bed almost as soon as he got up from the table. I don't recall him being particularly mean or anything when I was real little. He just kind of didn't have much to do with us. Mama made it clear that we had to behave and be very quiet when Papa was in the house. At the time I didn't think that was odd. He seemed like a quiet man who worked too hard and was wearing himself out before his time. He was nowhere near as mean as some of the other fathers I heard kids talking about, so I considered myself lucky. In fact, I think there were a lot of things going on in that house that I didn't notice at the time, because Mama did a very good job of keeping them hidden.

I never saw my father or my mother take a drink, nor did I ever see him raise his hand towards either my mother or any of us kids. Mama was the disciplinarian. Papa's presence loomed large when he was home, but Mama was the supreme boss inside the house.

Our home was very quiet. Mama's main rules were no yelling, no slamming doors and God help a kid who even thought about running inside the house! She talked softly. Papa hardly talked at all. It's difficult to imagine such a small house with six kids in it being quiet, but that's the way I recall it.

I remember playing house with Charlene on the back porch. We had rag dolls Mama had made for us. For the life of me I can't remember what else we did for entertainment in a house with no radio or books. I know we usually went to bed almost right after supper, even in the summertime when it stayed light for a long time. I can remember lying in my bed waiting for the sun to go down because I had some kind of nutty idea that you shouldn't sleep when it was light out. I think I was always afraid I might miss something.

For some reason that to this day I can't understand, when I was only a very little kid I made up my mind that I was going to go to school. I think I heard some people talking in a store about somebody who got a high school diploma and moved away for a good job somewhere away from our town. I made up my mind that I was going to get a diploma, too, whatever that was, so I could get a job and go away as well. I knew that getting a diploma somehow involved going to school, so I decided that's what I was going to do.

In my world – especially for a girl – wanting to go to school was about as ridiculous as wanting to go to the moon, but it was my goal, and come hell, high water or hurricane, I was going to do it. [I guess I should say now that my tendency to make crazy decisions and then see them through with pig-headed stubbornness, regardless of the cost, hasn't got any better with age. If you don't believe me, you could ask those people who run that church camp.]

When I was five years old, I kicked up such a fuss about going to school, my parents agreed to enroll me just to shut me up. I was the first person on either side of the family who ever set foot in a schoolhouse, despite whatever truancy laws Arkansas may have had on the books. I doubt my parents thought I would stick with it, because few of the kids whose parents enrolled them in school actually got very far.

I defied all local convention and cultural obstacles and went to school every single day it was open, without ever being absent once, until I was sixteen. What was even more amazing – and "worse" in a kind of twisted way – I got almost perfect marks in all my subjects.

It was often a struggle. Mama frequently asked me to stay home and help her with the other kids, especially when she was pregnant or nursing a baby, which was a lot of the time. I never rebelled in any other way, but I refused to miss school.

After a while, Mama started feeling pretty good about me going to school and she even made the boys to go, too. They didn't want to go and Papa didn't want them to go, but Mama made them go with me at least until they learned to read a little, write their names and do basic math. I insisted on taking Charlene to school, too. She hated it, but I boxed her ears if she fussed, so she went unless Mama asked her to stay home, which she did a lot. Sometimes Charlene volunteered to stay home to help Mama and there was nothing I could do about that, but I'd give Charlene the what for about it later when Mama wasn't looking.

I was an excellent student and I loved everything about school. I especially loved to read about far away places, and about animals and plants. I wasn't too interested in history and I hated math, but I loved biology and art. One day my teacher showed me a _National Geographic_ magazine, and I fell in love. I have read every page of every issue of the _National Geographic_ since that day. Sometimes while I'm waiting for the next issue, I go back and re-read old ones. These days I read it on-line.

It was a revelation to me that the world was so big and so full of amazing and beautiful things. My own little world seemed so small and dreary in comparison. I was the only person I knew, besides my schoolteacher, who seemed to have any interest in anything beyond the farm and the goings-on in our little town, except maybe the farm future prices they gave on the radio every morning. Pork bellies were the only outside news that mattered to the men and the weather report was the only news that mattered to the women.

My kin and neighbors all interpreted my academic success as a serious case of somebody who was too big for her britches. Most of them spent a lot of my childhood trying to knock me off what they considered to be my high horse. I dealt with it by ignoring people more or less altogether, except for Mama (as long as she wasn't trying to get me to skip school), the babies and my teacher. Ignoring people became kind of a habit for me.

I tolerated the sort of psychological abuse of the entire community, and made it through my days by dreaming of getting a high school diploma and then going off to find a job somewhere else. That was the furthest extent of my imagination. It never once occurred to me that I might go to college. To be honest, I don't even think I knew there was such a thing as college. I am sure that if I'd known about it, I would have been determined to go there, because I had an almost religious faith in the value of education. Lord only knows where I got that. It sure as hell didn't come from my family.

A high school education and a job as a secretary or telephone operator in Little Rock or somewhere like that was about as high as I could dream. For someone like me, even that amounted to almost a pipe dream. I am totally positive that I'd have done it, too. I'd have probably married a bus driver or milk man and moved to the suburbs. I'd have had a passel of kids and lived happily ever after in the knowledge that I beat the odds and made it out of the hills and into the "middle class". I am sure I'd have been the happiest housewife in Little Rock, Arkansas, taking care of my husband and kids and making cookies for PTA bake sales. By now, I'd have a bunch of grand kids who'd all come to my house for Christmas and whatnot.

But, that isn't how things turned out.

In the spring of 1950, Mama died. She caught a cold that went into a fever and then she died. It all happened really fast, within only a couple of weeks or so. I was sixteen at the time.

Of course, it was a blow to our family, but almost every family we knew had lost at least one member to death, either from some kind of freak farm accident or due to illness. A lot of our neighbors buried somebody about once a year. I missed my mother – terribly – but I was still alive, and so were my brothers and sisters. My mother had taught me that life goes on after somebody died.

Every time we went to a funeral or made food for a family that was grieving, she'd give me a big lecture about that. After she passed, I remembered what she told me and was determined to practice it in my life. I missed her and mourned her, but I was prepared to continue to live my life the way I know she'd have wanted me to do. I intended to do just what she taught me to do when faced with any kind of hardship: grit my teeth and keep on working.

Unfortunately, my father didn't see things quite the same way.

A couple of days after we buried Mama, I got up and got ready to go to school. I had already missed a few days. I felt bad about missing school, even though I had a good excuse. Besides, I needed to keep busy in order to make myself feel better. So, despite the fact that I still felt really sad about Mama being gone, I got dressed and I made the other kids who were old enough for school get ready, too.

That would leave Papa with the two babies, David was four and Lucy was 18 months old. I don't know what the hell I thought he was going to do with them. I guess I reckoned it wasn't my problem. They were his kids, not mine.

I was making breakfast when Papa walked into the room and asked me why I was all dressed up. I told him I was going to school. He told me I wasn't going to school any more because I was the woman of the house now and I had to stay home and take care of the young'uns. I told him I'd help around the house, and cook and clean and take care of the children all the rest of the time, but I was going to school during the weekdays and the older ones were coming with me. He told me I was going to stay home and take care of my family. I told him if he wanted somebody to take care of his young'uns he needed to hire a housekeeper or get married again. I reckon I shouldn't have said that so soon after Mama died.

The next few minutes are burnt into my mind like a movie in super-slow motion. Papa was standing by the table. I was at the stove scrambling eggs. He stared at me for a minute or so and showed me the naked hatred he felt for me. Somehow I knew he had been building up that hatred for quite a while but he had never showed it to me before. I'm guessing Mama had something to do with the fact that I didn't know how he felt about me. I knew in those few seconds before my universe fell apart that I had been an embarrassment to him by my refusal to fit into the local culture. I was something he hated beyond all words or reason: an uppity female. In the past Mama had always been there to protect me. Now she was gone, and he was going to teach me what was what.

I saw him take off his belt. I turned away from the stove to face him. I must have known what was coming because I remember I somehow had the presence of mind to push the skillet off the heat. Papa grabbed me by the hair and commenced to beat me the way I somehow knew he had been wanting to do for a very long time. Once he got started, he kept on beating me, giving release to all his pent up rage.

The other kids were up and they came out to see what the commotion was about. Frankie sized up the situation immediately and herded the rest of them back into another room so they couldn't see what was happening. They could hear Papa screaming at me. I didn't scream or cry, but I know I was grunting and groaning when he hit me. I could hear them wailing and crying, especially the babies.

At some point I fell down on the floor and I half crawled, half scooted under the kitchen table. Papa gave up with the belt and started kicking me. To this day I don't know by what miracle it was that the only bones he broke was a few ribs. I was bleeding from the nose and mouth plus a bunch of other cuts and I was barely conscious.

Eventually he quit kicking me and said he was going to plow a field. He said he'd be back for dinner at two o'clock in the afternoon and it better be ready or there'd be another lickin' and another and another until I learned to mind properly.

After he slammed the door and clomped across the porch, the house lay quiet, except for my heart pounding in my ears and my baby sister, Lucy, screaming in the other room. After they were sure he was gone, Charlene and Frankie came into the kitchen. The others wanted to come, too, but Frankie yelled at them to stay put. Charlene and Frankie helped me crawl out from under the table and into a chair. Charlene offered to clean me up. I told her I didn't want to be cleaned up.

I told them to go into the bedrooms and to pack two changes of clothes for each of us and to put them in sacks. When they had done that, the six of us took off toward town. We lived at the end of a dirt road and there was no traffic. Frankie half carried, half dragged me. Charlene carried Lucy. The other boys kind of bunched together and followed behind.

When we got to the main road somebody in a pickup truck stopped and offered us a ride. I told Frankie to get in the cab with the babies and I managed, somehow, to climb in the back of the truck with the other kids. I tried not to let the man see how bad I was beat by pulling my scarf around my face. Hillbilly women were often shy around strange men, so I guess he didn't think it was strange. Or maybe he knew that I was the crazy older daughter who was all high and mighty and probably playing Mata Hari or something.

Whatever.

I don't know what the man may have asked Frankie while we were driving or what story Frankie concocted about why we were all going into town together. He must have told the man we needed to buy supplies, because the man pulled up in front of the store when we got to town.

I rode lying on my side in the bed of that pickup truck, bouncing over a rutted dirt road. I had three broken ribs and God knows how many cuts and bruises. I think I got some new bruises bouncing around in the back of that truck. By the time we got to town, I had thrown up in the back of the man's truck a couple of times. When he stopped, I kind of rolled off the tailgate and the other kids got out. The man drove off, with my vomit still in the bed of his truck. I felt bad about that.

Frankie asked if I wanted to go to the doctors. I said no, and turned toward the police station. That was when it dawned on Frankie what I had in mind and he tried to stop me, but even as bad hurt as I was, I was too fast for him. I was in a rage that rivaled Papa's and I had more strength than I should have had considering my injuries. In any case, I marched into the police station and told the officer on duty I wanted to press charges against my father.

To this day, I don't know how I survived the next few hours, which turned out to be worse than the original beating. The policeman on duty was a friend of Papa's. He didn't want to take the complaint. I insisted on seeing the police chief. The officer told me the chief was out, but invited me to wait. I sat down on a bench to wait and ordered the children to sit, too, and to be quiet. They sat and nobody said a word or moved a muscle. Even Lucy sat on Charlene's lap without fidgeting or crying.

The chief came in, and, fortunately for me, he happened to have his wife with him. She was on her way to a church meeting or something. She had been a friend of my mother's, at least before Mama married Papa and moved out to the hills where Mama didn't have any friends nearby, or time to socialize even if there had been any women around.

Between his wife and me crying and carrying on, we got the police chief to call Child Services, but he still refused to swear out a warrant against Papa. Hell, for all I know beating your kids might not have even been a crime in Arkansas at the time. Lord knows, it was a common enough practice.

We waited for hours for someone to come get us. Frankie kept arguing with me that he didn't want to let Child Services take us. I told him that I wasn't going back to that house and neither was any of the other kids, including him. I all but dared him to defy me. Eventually he shut up, and the other kids settled down as well. I think Lucy went to sleep on Charlene's lap at some point.

Somebody must have gone to tell Papa what was happening. After we had waited a couple of hours, Papa came in and he was even more worked up than he had been in the morning. He burst through the front door of the police station, screaming and swearing, and then he came after me again. He picked up a chair and swung it over his head to hit me with it. The police had to stop him and then they had to arrest him because the damned fool man attacked me right there in the police station in front of a bunch of witnesses. Even if it wasn't against the law to beat your kids at home, it was a crime to disturb the peace inside the police station.

They put him in a cell and they left us kids sitting there in the room with the door open between the office and the area where the cells were. Papa was yelling at me and calling me every name imaginable most of which I didn't understand at the time. The babies were hungry and scared and tired. They began to howl. Frankie and Dwight sided with Papa; they started whining and begging me to take them all home.

I just sat there, listening to all the commotion and waiting for Child Services to come and get us. I don't think I said a word to anybody.

When the social worker came in she asked me what had happened. I told her, but Papa was my best witness because he was still screaming and yelling at me from the jail cell and threatening to hit me again if he could get close enough.

The last words I heard my father speak as she led us out of the station was him calling me a "god-damned whore" and warning me that if I ever came near him again he'd kill me with his bare hands. I don't think there was a soul in that room who had any doubt he meant it.

The Child Services people took us to an orphanage in Little Rock.

I think that's enough for tonight.

## Chapter 3

The next morning Maybelle ate breakfast and then headed out for her morning hike. She wandered uphill beside a stream, staying back in the trees and walking as quietly as she could. Her efforts were rewarded when she saw deer and even an otter drinking from the stream right in front of her. She took pictures and wandered around for several hours. When she got hungry she sat on a rock, ate a couple of power bars and drank a bottle of water. When she had only one more bottle of water left, she turned back towards home, taking her time. She didn't return to the house until well after noon.

Felicia was hanging laundry out on the line in the back yard. It occurred to Maybelle that Felicia might be the only American woman she'd met in decades who still did that. Felicia said, "I didn't hear you go out. How long have you been gone?"

Maybelle looked at her watch. "Oh, about five hours, I guess."

"You've been walking in the hills for five hours? You must be exhausted. You want some tea or something?"

"Actually, what I am is desperately in need of a bathroom. Excuse me." She smiled and waved.

She didn't really have to go to the bathroom. She knew her way around the woods well enough to be able to take care of bodily functions without indoor plumbing. She just wasn't in the mood to make small talk with Felicia. She ate a sandwich and some fruit for lunch. While she ate, she scanned several newspapers on-line, and caught up on her email.

After lunch, she planned to read for a while, but realized she was tired, and decided to humor the Old Woman and lie down for a nap. Before she did she stretched various muscle groups very carefully to avoid stiffness later, and then she lay down across the bed and fell asleep.

She woke to the sound of knocking on the door. It was Felicia announcing dinner, again at 4:30. Maybelle sighed and went to wash up wondering what in the hell kind of people eat dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon. She stuffed her irritation, knowing that she was hungry and would enjoy the meal even if it was at such an ungodly early hour.

While they ate, Maybelle told Felicia about some of the wildlife she had seen on her hike. Felicia had no idea there were so many animals so near her home. Maybelle asked her how long it had been since she had hiked in the woods. Felicia replied that she had never hiked in the woods. It wasn't something that very many locals did.

Maybelle laughed and said, "You live here in the shadow of those gorgeous mountains and you learn to take them for granted. It's so sad, but that happens everywhere. People seem to become almost oblivious to the beauty that lies just outside their back door."

Felicia asked a general question about where Maybelle had been to try to elicit more details about Maybelle's past, but Maybelle didn't bite. In fact, she changed the subject and asked about laundry facilities. Felicia told her the washer and dryer were in the basement. The entrance was through the kitchen on Felicia's side of the house. She offered to give Maybelle a key so she could use them. Maybelle declined. She said she didn't feel right about having a key to her Landlady's home.

Maybelle said she thought it was time she bought a car so she could go to the laundry and run errands on her own. Felicia told her were no dealerships in town, but there were several in Henderson and even more in Asheville. She offered to take Maybelle car shopping the next day if she could go in the morning because Felicia had a library club meeting in the afternoon. Maybelle accepted, saying she should probably take a break from hiking for a day anyway.

Maybelle helped with the dishes, declined the invitation to watch a movie on TV and returned to her apartment. One advantage of eating supper so early was that she was finished and home in time to watch the sunset again. She always watched the sunsets wherever she was (usually _before_ dinner). She loved having such a great view literally out of her back door. The deer were closer tonight than they had been. Maybelle wondered for a second if Felicia would mind if she put out a salt block to bring them even closer, but then Maybelle realized that wouldn't do Felicia's fabulous garden any good. Since that garden was going to feed Maybelle, too, she decided it would be better to leave well enough alone. If she couldn't bring the deer closer, Maybelle could buy a telephoto lens for her new digital camera. In view of the fact that Felicia had furnished Maybelle's apartment with stuff from her attic, Maybelle had saved enough money to pay for a new lens, or two.

After the sun set, she tried to read for a while but found herself not in the mood.

Instead, she stretched out her legs and put her computer in her lap. She leaned back, closed her eyes and took several deep breaths before continuing with her story.

The orphanage wasn't too bad, at least when I considered the alternatives of going home or being on the streets and responsible for five other kids. They had a grammar school on the premises for the little kids. The older residents like me, who were so inclined, went to a regular high school.

Frankie was old enough to quit school legally, so he refused to go to school. He got a job at a grocery store near the orphanage. The State kept all the money he earned. That never did sit well with me. Seems to me the boy should have got to keep at least some of what he worked for.

Going to high school in Little Rock was a scary proposition, and I was one of very few residents of the orphanage who actually went through with it. I had to ride a school bus and I went to a really big public high school. A few years later, that school would be the focus of a landmark legal case that people in Little Rock still don't like to talk about. When I was there, Little Rock Central High School was just another all-white high school in redneck country. It was a far cry from my little one-room schoolhouse in the hills. There were hundreds of students and the halls were noisy, crowded and hot. My teacher had done her best, but I was far behind the other students in my grade.

In my home town they called me names because I wanted to go to school. They made fun of me for being what amounted to an over-educated snob, at least compared with the rest of the illiterates in our community. In Little Rock, they made fun of me for being an ignorant hillbilly, and an orphan to boot. It never ceases to amaze and disturb me about how cruel people can be to children.

It seemed that nobody in the world had any use for me.

I didn't let that stop me from my quest to earn a high school diploma, however. I tolerated the heckling from my fellow students, and even a few of the teachers, and I studied every waking moment when I wasn't doing chores around the orphanage. At first, I was far behind the other students, but I caught up by sheer hard work. By the time I graduated, I was in the top 10% of my class. They still called me a hillbilly and treated me like white trash. I paid no attention to their taunts. What mattered to me was that I had achieved my goal of graduating from high school.

I didn't go to the Commencement or any of the other graduation-related ceremonies because I didn't have the money for a cap and gown and the state of Arkansas sure as hell wasn't going to pay for all that nonsense. Three of us graduated at the orphanage that year, and they made a little party for us at Sunday dinner the week when the graduation ceremonies were to take place. I thought that was real nice and I was very proud. I wanted to share the party with my brothers and sisters, but the orphanage administrators wouldn't bend the rules to let that happen.

The residents of the orphanage were split up by gender and age. I saw Charlene occasionally because she was in a dorm across the hall from me, but I hardly ever saw the boys except from a distance. The baby, Lucy, who was only 18 months old when we arrived, had been adopted almost immediately and they told us to forget she had ever existed. Can you believe someone saying that to a kid about their baby sister? It's almost sixty years later and I can still get weepy at the very thought.

None of the rest of us was adopted. We were too old and, probably if the truth be told, too hillbilly-ish in our ways. We went to school and we helped out around the orphanage or had jobs in the neighborhood like Frankie. Mostly we just did the same thing as all the other "unadoptables": we waited until we were eighteen when we would have to leave. I had developed the crazy fantasy that when I was eighteen, I could leave and they would let me take Frankie, Charlene, Dwight and David with me.

It didn't pan out that way. I turned eighteen in December of 1952. The people who ran the orphanage told me I had to leave.

I was a really good typist and I had been the best in my business classes. After I graduated, I worked in the administrative office of the orphanage, with no pay. When it was time for me to leave, one of the social workers at the orphanage helped me get a job at the telephone company in Little Rock, taking down complaints and writing repair orders. I got a room at the YWCA. The state gave me a few dollars to get me started; I thought I should have got a little more than that what with the fact that I'd worked for the orphanage full-time for over six months for nothing. They told me that's all the money I was entitled to, so I took it and I paid a month's rent at the Y because they charged you less if you paid for a whole month in advance. That didn't leave me any money to eat on, but I figured I could offer to wash dishes in a diner someplace in exchange for a meal now and then. That was my plan. As it turned out it was a bad one.

I went to the orphanage administration and told them I had my diploma and a job. I told them I was going to save up to get an apartment and then I wanted to take my sister and brothers home with me. They told me it didn't work that way. The other children were all wards of the state until they turned eighteen, at which point they'd be turned out, too. In the meantime, I had no right to take them. I offered to adopt them, but was told I was too young and not financially stable enough for that.

I had already lost my parents. I had lost my baby sister. Now they were telling me I was going to lose the rest of my family, too. They told me I should just go about my life and assume that the others had been adopted, which was for damned sure not going to happen and we all knew it. That might have been the only time in my life somebody told me 'no' and I did not throw a fit. I knew the law was on their side. I had no options. I had no money to hire a lawyer if I had even known such a thing existed. I sat in the hard wooden chair listening to the lady say words to me that crushed the happy fantasy I had been living on for two years, and then I simply put on my coat and walked away without saying a word. I remember it was snowing. The world was gray and dreary and cold. Or maybe that is just how I felt about it.

That conversation took place on a Friday. I was supposed to start my job on Monday. I spent the entire weekend in my room at the Y, crying. I didn't even go out to try to find something to eat.

On Monday, I got up and went to work because I didn't know what else to do. Mama always insisted that when the chips were down, the only thing you could do was work hard. I was determined to do that.

Before noon on my first day at work, my boss had touched my breast three times and I can't remember how many customers swore at me because of something that was wrong with their phone and the repair people didn't fix it or didn't show up, or some other reason they had for yelling at me for something that wasn't my fault. Other than Papa on the day he beat me, nobody had ever said a swear word to me and I didn't take it well. I didn't care how much I needed money, I knew I couldn't work there.

I went back to the Y that night and called the social worker who had got me the job. I told her what had happened and said I wanted to quit and find another job. I thought she would appreciate the information so she wouldn't try to put any other girls from the orphanage in such a horrible place. I asked her if she could help me find a different job.

I was shocked by her reaction. She was angry with me. She told me that was the way it is in the world and I'd better learn to deal with it. She said she had gone out on a limb for me and she didn't appreciate me being so ungrateful. She called me a lazy, no-good hillbilly and said she shouldn't have wasted her time trying to help the likes of me. She even told me that she thought I should give the job a chance because it was about the best I'd ever be able to hope for.

I thanked her for getting me the job and told her I was quitting because nobody deserved to be treated like that. On top of all the other horrible things she had said to me, she said she was very disappointed in me for being a quitter.

I didn't bother to tell her how disappointed I was in her, too. A woman (and a state social worker at that) who won't protect a young girl from sexual harassment and verbal abuse is not somebody I could ever respect. Not to mention her cruel bigotry. I didn't know that word at the time but I had a lot of experience being on the receiving end of the concept.

I hung up the phone and went back to my room where I sat down and wrote out a resignation letter. The next morning I went to the phone company and I turned in my letter that spelled out exactly why I was quitting. The lady in the HR department scanned it quickly, handed it back to me and told me she didn't need it. She fired me for insubordination. I thought about asking her if I was supposed to actually give in to my boss's sexual advances in order to not be "insubordinate", but decided arguing with her wasn't worth the effort. Whether I resigned or was fired, I was still not going to work there any more.

I walked outside, without a job, without any money, and without a person in the world who gave a damn if I lived or died. The only thing I had going for me was I had paid for my room at the Y for a month. At least I had a place to sleep. I had no food or money to buy any, but I would not be sleeping outside in the snow. At least not for a month. That is, if I didn't starve to death in the meantime. It had been four days since I had eaten a full meal.

I walked around downtown Little Rock in search of a place to eat. I stopped in a restaurant and told the lady at the door I had no money but I offered to wash dishes or bus tables in exchange for a meal. She threatened to call the cops. I tried again with another restaurant down the street. The manager ran me off. I decided to try one more time before panicking. I stopped in a coffee shop. I told the person at the register my tale. She told me to get the hell out of her place.

I could feel naked terror start to rise up and grip my gut, and I turned to leave. A man who was sitting at the counter stopped me. He was wearing some kind of a uniform. I thought he was a policeman or something. He invited me to have lunch with him. I was young and naive and I had no instincts to warn me away from men who might prey on young girls.

Fortunately for me, the incredible luck that has surfaced in my life from time to time made its first appearance that day. It turned out the man was not trying to take advantage of me. He genuinely wanted to help. Something in me told me to trust him.

He bought me lunch. Actually, he bought me two lunches. I was so hungry, I inhaled the first hamburger, and he ordered me another. When I had finished the second sandwich, he asked me what I intended to do next. I told him I had no idea. I told him I had a room at the YWCA for a month, but no money for food and I'd been fired from my job. I said I reckoned I'd have to start looking for a new job that day, but I had no idea of how to go about that.

For some reason, I didn't tell him how I came to be in the world alone. As a matter of fact except for once, I have never told anyone about how my siblings and I came to be in that orphanage before now.

The man didn't pry into my past. He seemed mainly interested in my future, which was, of course, the most pressing issue. He asked me if I had ever thought of joining the military. I was so ignorant I barely knew what that was. He asked me if my dad had been in the War. I told him yes. He asked what branch of the service Papa had been in, and I told him I didn't know, but I did know he had been wounded in Italy and the government had sent him home.

The man explained to me about the Navy and the Army, the Air Force and Marine Corps. He said he was a Navy recruiter, and he invited me to go back to his office with him where he could show me what the Navy could offer me. I had nothing else to do, and the man had bought me two hamburgers. I reckoned I owed it to him to at least listen to what he had to say. It was the least I could do.

We went back to his office, which was only a couple of blocks away. It looked like a travel agency, with posters from all around the world. I think the Navy advertising slogan inviting recruits to "Join the Navy and See the World" came later, but the Navy was already doing its recruiting more or less on that basis. He talked about all the wonderful places I could visit. What he didn't mention was a war going on in a place I'd never heard of called Korea. He also didn't mention a little thing called the Cold War. He made the Navy sound like a cool way to travel. I was predisposed to want to do that. So, I signed up.

You could say, I joined the Navy, and, boy, did I ever see the world!

She put away her computer, finished her glass of milk and went to bed.

Chapter 4

The next morning Maybelle got up at her usual ungodly early hour. She didn't need to be ready to meet Felicia until later, so she decided to pick up where she'd left off the night before.

Since I had no family to say good-bye to and I needed a way to eat immediately, he processed me right then and there and set me up for immediate for induction. Later that same day, he put me on a bus bound for Stillwater, Oklahoma, where I would undergo basic training.

Most of the girls hated basic training. I thought it was kind of an interesting experience. We did a lot of physical fitness training, and I discovered how out of shape I was. The Navy fixed that pretty damned quick and I've been careful to keep in shape ever since. They taught us about the Navy and how to recognize officers so you could salute them and not get into trouble. There was a bunch of other class work, but that's the main thing I learned from the classes.

A lot of the girls thought the food was bad. Having gone hungry a few times in my life both before Mama died and more recently after getting kicked out of the orphanage, I knew that if I was hungry enough, I could eat just about anything. Uncle Sam was willing to put three squares a day in front of me; I ate the food without bitching about the taste, which, frankly, wasn't all that bad compared with some of the shit they fed us at the orphanage.

After I graduated from basic training, they sent me to the Pensacola Naval Air Station where I was assigned to the secretarial pool. It didn't take long for some of the senior officers to discover that I was a very good secretary. I was a hick, but I could type like crazy, and very accurately. I couldn't spell very well, but I looked up virtually every word in a dictionary. That slowed me down a little, but my overall work product was superb.

They also noticed that I didn't date and didn't act all girlie like some of the other secretaries. I was quiet, withdrawn and way too serious for my age. My job was essentially my life. After work, I'd go for walks or long bike rides around the base and then I'd read until it was time to go to sleep. The other girls thought I was a snob. The guys must not have thought of me at all because very few of them even so much as gave any sign they noticed me.

Perhaps for all those reasons, the Brass loved me. I worked hard, followed instructions, didn't drink or carouse. I had few, if any, friends so I was unlikely to tell tales where I shouldn't. Way sooner than anyone would have expected, they made me the personal secretary to the base commander. I had no idea what a cherry assignment that was for someone so young.

The CO was an older man who had three grown daughters. I think he took a kind of parental interest in me. We had a great working relationship and I loved my job. The fact that I had hardly any life outside of work didn't matter to me. I had a roof over my head, food on the table, clothes on my back and I was busy enough to be able to avoid thinking about my past. That was when I started training myself to get very busy with work whenever thoughts of the past and my family started to bubble up.

I saw the ocean for the first time in Pensacola. I suppose technically the Gulf of Mexico is not an ocean, but it was the biggest body of water I had ever seen. It was also magnificent and beautiful, but terrifying to someone who couldn't swim.

Some of the other women in my unit also could not swim. We thought that was bad for Sailors, so one of the girls asked a guy she knew to teach us to swim. He tried to teach us in the Gulf and damned near drowned all of us because there were terrible rip currents that day. Eventually, I learned to swim, first in a swimming pool on the base. Later, I learned to swim in the ocean, and I even learned to SCUBA. But, that was much later.

After three years in Pensacola, the base commander received notice he was being transferred to a place called Okinawa, and he asked me if I was interested in going with him. I liked working for him, and I had no other plans, so I agreed to go with him. It's embarrassing to admit this, but I thought Okinawa was someplace in Oklahoma. I had no idea I was about to go more than half way around the world!

The year was 1955. Japan was no longer technically occupied by American forces, but we still had a strong military presence there. My C.O. and I hopped a transport plane in Pensacola. I expected a flight of a couple of hours to Oklahoma. Instead we flew several hours to Miramar in California, where we had only a brief layover. After that we flew for twelve more hours to Japan.

It took me days to recover from the trip, but once I got acclimated to the time change, I went to work. My job in Japan was almost identical to what it had been in Pensacola. I lived on the base, and at first, my life changed hardly at all. For the first several weeks, I never left the base.

Very soon after my arrival, I did what practically every other GI did when posted to Japan: I bought a camera and started learning to take photos. My first camera was a 35 mm Nikon that came with two extra lenses, one had color filters and the other was a small telephoto lens. One of the guys in the motor pool was the resident expert photographer (he later went on to a pretty decent career as a photojournalist). He gave me a few pointers, and the rest I kind of figured out by myself, through a process of trial and error.

Okinawa is a great place to learn photography. It has every imaginable kind of scenery: beaches, mountains, gardens and hundreds of lovely Japanese shrines, not to mention the incredibly beautiful people of Japan. Once I got up the courage to leave the base, and start exploring, I was inspired to take a lot of pictures.

Having spent the War years in an illiterate household in the Ozarks, I knew nothing about the War in the Pacific. Papa had served in Europe, but he never talked about it. I was barely aware that there was such a thing as a country called Japan or the Pacific Theater of Operations. I was probably the only American stationed in Japan at the time who was not infected by the anti-Japanese prejudice that carried over from the War. On the contrary, I made it my business to learn a few words of Japanese, and I explored the local sights and culture, first locally in Okinawa, and, later, in the home islands as well.

Like all other single WAVES, I lived in a barracks on the base. At that point in my life, I didn't smoke or drink or gamble, and, on the rare occasion I went on a date, the guy paid. About the only thing I bought for myself was cheap Hong Kong-made civilian clothes for when I was off duty, and not-so-cheap but bargain-priced camera equipment. Therefore, I ended up saving most of my salary and accumulated a collection of very good cameras and accessories.

After I had been in Japan for 18 months, I was eligible for a 30 day furlough. Most of the service men and women used their furloughs to go home and visit their families. I had no family to visit, and I believed I would never again have the opportunity to see that part of the world, so I took out most of my savings, packed a very small ditty bag of clothes, a big bag of camera equipment and took off with no particular destination in mind other than getting back to base in time not to be declared AWOL.

I think on that trip I must have visited every city and major town in Japan, plus a lot of villages and out-of-the way temples. Keep in mind that the Japanese hated Americans and they were probably not happy to see a lone American woman wandering around. I was used to being held in contempt by people in my world, so I didn't let it bother me. In any case, that trip was the beginning of my passion for travel photography. I came home with rolls of film containing hundreds of photos.

I didn't want to spend the money to develop all of the pictures because I knew some of them would be no good. I talked to the guy in the base photo shop about that. He suggested I should learn to develop my own photos. That way I could sneak a peak at the negatives and only print the pictures that looked good. Photography was a big hobby among the American G.I.'s in Japan at the time and there were probably half a dozen home-built photo developing labs on the base. I found one that would let me in, and I started developing my own prints. I ended up with a hundred or more good black and white prints from that first trip.

That became my pattern for the entire time I was in the Navy. I saved my money during the year and then spent it traveling when I had leave. I took pictures of everything I saw.

I ended up spending seven years in Japan under several base commanders.

I don't plan to go into what I did in the Navy other than this quick summary because I think what my family is interested in is the travel part anyway, but I want to give this quick overview.

First of all, I said, above, that I was used to being held in contempt by people in my world, starting with the people in my home town who thought I was uppity, and the people in Little Rock who thought I was a hick. I never left the base in Stillwater, but in Pensacola, on the rare occasion I left the base to go anywhere, I was treated with suspicion because it was kind of the general opinion that Navy women were either lesbians (I didn't know what that meant at the time but I understood it was something bad) or shameless hussies (I knew what that was and even though I wasn't one, I was aware that a lot of the WAVES I knew fell into that category, so I kind of understood why the locals held that opinion). The Japanese were polite, but they were not big on outsiders, especially Americans. They seemed to especially dislike American women; I was told that is because they perceived us as unladylike. I suppose they had a point about that. As for me, I sure as hell have never been accused of being ladylike in any culture I've ever visited! Anyway, I had become accustomed to living in a world that held me in contempt.

The first and most significant exception to that "given" in my life was the United States Navy. I was a good secretary, and eager to learn. I may have talked like a hick, but I was smart, and, more importantly, I was a quick study when it came to learning new things. From the very beginning, I did a great job and the Brass loved me. I got glowing reports from my superiors. I became the base commander's secretary when I was still only a Seaman. Before I went to Okinawa I was promoted to Petty Officer.

The United States Navy was the first place I felt accepted and even valued. I responded to that acceptance by devoting myself to my career with an intensity unequaled by any of the other enlisted person I ever met. My commitment and devotion to the Navy was more like that of the career officers. The Navy accepted me as I had never been accepted before. I responded with the kind of love most people reserve for their families. The truth is: for more than twenty years of my life, the Navy was the only family I had. It would be impossible for me to overstate the importance of that fact.

In early 1963, the base commander in Okinawa received transfer orders to a place I'd never heard of, but he asked me to go with him. I agreed to go because I liked working for him, and I'd been in Japan for almost a decade. I was up for something new. A few weeks later, we arrived in Vietnam.

My first post in Vietnam was in Saigon with the Activities Support HQ. A couple of years later, I went to DaNang for a stint with the Activities Support Base there. Later, in 1965, after it had been clear to everybody else in the world for some time, the Navy finally realized that we were providing a little more than "activities support" to the South Vietnamese. I received orders to go to Saigon and help set up the Operations Headquarters office. I was an administrative supervisor for a while. Once Ops was fully staffed, I ended up as the personal secretary for some of the top Navy brass in Vietnam. (I'm not going to go into the exact Navy Acronyms or all the stupid, puffed-up titles, I'm trying to do this in plain English.)

In 1963, Saigon was kind of a sleepy outpost, at least for the American military. I sort of liked it after so many years in Japan. It's hard to explain why. The Vietnamese didn't like the Americans any better than the Japanese did. The Southeast Asians thought Americans were big and smelly, dirty and disgusting. I learned very quickly that went double for the military women. I didn't feel any more welcome in Vietnam than I did in Japan, at least as far as the natives were concerned. The difference was that Vietnam was much more cosmopolitan than Japan. There were people there other than Vietnamese people and American soldiers. In Vietnam there were several other cultures around, led by the leftover French. You might ask how I knew about that, considering that I was nothing but a hick from the Ozarks. The fact is, I didn't know anything about it until I got there and started exploring. And, no, the word "cosmopolitan" wasn't even in my vocabulary at the time. (Hell, it's barely in my vocabulary now.)

I discovered that there were several layers to the local culture that gave Saigon its variety, both culturally and visually. I started taking color photos in Saigon because I found I just couldn't do it justice in black and white.

Asia is a big place, and almost a universe all to itself. It would be a mistake to make any general statements about Asia because the differences between countries and peoples are vast. The contrast between post-WWII Japan and Vietnam shocked me. Japan was a gentle and serene place to me. I was unaware of the fact that Japan came across that way because it was exhausted, spent and beaten down after the WWII.

Vietnam, by contrast, was none of those things. It was hot and bustling in every possible way. The war was hot. The atmosphere at HQ was electric and, to me, exciting – at least at first. The weather was hot. God, was it hot in Vietnam! Eventually I got used to being wet all the time, either from sweat or rain. I even learned to be wet without trying to dry off. That came in handy later on in my life on several occasions.

The climate was miserable. The country, however, was beautiful, not the in the same ordered, trimmed and controlled way as Japan, but in a wild and dangerous way that I loved. At least the countryside of Vietnam was gorgeous until Uncle Sam burnt half of the vegetation with napalm and then killed the rest of it with Agent Orange. (Oops, sorry. I promised I wouldn't editorialize.)

I liked Saigon. Correction: I _loved_ Saigon. It was beautiful, multi-cultural, colorful. It was heaven for a photographer. I even felt pretty safe wandering around by myself there, at least in the early 1960's when the war was taking place mostly elsewhere.

DaNang was a whole other ballgame. It was hot, too, but it was also miserable and scary. The US was "in it" at that point and the base in DaNang was there to support ops in the Mekong Delta. We had Naval air ops and swift boats and every other manner of ops, all of which were dangerous as hell. I worked for Command. We routinely worked eighteen hour days in a pressure cooker. We sent a lot of full body bags back to America. Processing that paperwork was the part of my job that sucked the most.

I know I said I wouldn't go into politics, but I have to say this on behalf of the military command in Vietnam. We might have turned out to be a bunch of incompetent boobs but that wasn't because we didn't work hard. We did the best we could with the intelligence we had (which was often incorrect and almost always incomplete) and the orders we were given from Washington (which were usually incomprehensible and always utterly stupid).

The commanding officers truly cared about the well-being of the troops. They wanted to make decisions that would carry out Washington's ludicrous orders while providing as much support and safety for the troops as possible. We knew (although nobody who valued their career would say so out loud) that our task was impossible. We knew (although I never heard anyone admit it) that we were sending our soldiers and sailors into war for political reasons and with no true military outcome in mind. Some of the officers were very torn up by that. A couple of my bosses lived on a toxic blend of Maalox and bourbon. I knew that was no solution, but I understood it.

Another digression. A lot of people have asked me where I was when I heard about the Kennedy assassination. I was in a restaurant in Saigon when I heard the news. A bunch of us from HQ had gone out to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant near our barracks. The people there spoke passable English and they at least attempted to keep the prostitution behind-the-scenes, so Command allowed female staff to patronize the place, provided we were in a group that included male staff.

Anyway, we had eaten and were sitting around shooting the bull. One of the Command senior staff rushed in and told us we had to get back to base urgently.

We ran the two blocks back to the office. Everybody there was standing around a radio; some people (male and female) were crying. They had just made the announcement that the President was dead. That was a huge shock to the whole country, but for military personnel, it was kind of a double blow. Kennedy was America's president, but he was also the military Commander-In-Chief. Worse still for us, President Kennedy had been in the Navy, so he was a Brother.

As if that weren't bad enough, some of the officers on Command staff had served with him. They knew him personally. My own particular boss at the time had served with him on the PT boats in WWII, and had known Kennedy pretty well before he went back to Boston and got into politics. My boss was inconsolable. We had a few pretty rough days, emotionally, but Johnson was inaugurated and...

... well, after that we were off to the races in Vietnam and we didn't have time to dwell on our grief or anything else except trying to muddle through and keep as many of our sailors alive as we could.

Maybelle got up to stretch and noticed Felicia outside feeding the birds. She stuck her head out the window and asked Felicia what time she wanted to leave to go car shopping. Felicia said she was ready. Maybelle gave her a thumbs up and turned to get her purse.

They decided to stop for lunch on the way to the dealership, not knowing how long it would take to process the paperwork. Felicia asked where Maybelle wanted to eat. Maybelle made a face and said she didn't really like to eat in restaurants when she could eat at home, but she had only a couple of requirements: it had to be locally owned (no chain or fast food joints) and it had to have good coffee.

Felicia said, "I heard there's a new place in Henderson that serves Low Country food."

"Low Country as in coastal Carolina?"

"Yeah. The person who owns the restaurant is from Savannah. I think she styles herself after Paula Deen. Could be good."

Maybelle wrinkled her nose and said, "Low Country cooking is wonderful, but I hope she doesn't style her restaurant after Paula Deen's."

"You've been there?"

"Yes. And I was not impressed. Oh, the food was okay. Actually some of it was very good, but I know from experience that you can walk inta just about any little diner in the South that has a woman at the stove and get food that's every bit as good if not better, and for a fraction of the price.

"Paula Deen is a typical American TV marketing success. She had a decent product that was the same as every other mother in Savannah was serving up. She found a way to make herself stand out, first, by creating that loud, flamboyant image and, second, by making herself a celebrity. People who've never been to Savannah before go to her restaurant because they've heard about it on TV, not because of the food."

Felicia looked a little put off by the outburst. Maybelle reigned herself in with some difficulty before she worked herself up into a tirade about modern American culture.

The parking lot of the restaurant was full. The restaurant was busy, but they were seated right away. The waitress brought a plate of biscuits and offered coffee. Maybelle took a whiff of the biscuits, grinned and rubbed her hands together. "Bring me some molasses and I'm good." The waitress grinned back and was back in a flash with a bottle of black-strap molasses.

Felicia ordered a fried chicken dinner. Maybelle ordered black eyed peas and rice, collard greens and asked for "just a little taste of the mac'n'cheese."

Felicia made a face, "Are you a vegetarian?"

"Not really. I eat meat, but I like all the 'go withs' better than the meat, and I figure they're better for me." She winked, "I'm not askin' them how much fatback is in the collard greens."

The food was fantastic and the prices were embarrassingly low. Maybelle picked up the check, and gave the waitress an inordinate tip, saying, "I'm basing the tip on what this meal should have cost. Thank you. I'll for sure be back real soon!"

When they got to the car, Felicia asked her what kind of a car she wanted to look for. Maybelle thought about it for a while and said, "Well, I love to drive German cars, and in these mountains a Mercedes would be a lot of fun to drive, but I'm afraid it would be considered pretentious in your town. I guess I'd better stick with a Japanese car. Let's start with Honda."

"Don't you want to look at an American car?"

"Hell, no! I want a car that I can depend on!"

Felicia was obviously annoyed by that, but she didn't say anything. Maybelle changed the subject and started asking questions about the history and culture of the area. That distracted Felicia enough to get past her annoyance.

Soon Felicia turned into a Honda dealership. A salesman met them in the lot, asking if they were looking for anything special. Maybelle said, "I'm looking for a Civic, preferably a hybrid if you have one in stock. Don't care what color as long as it isn't white. Automatic transmission, with air."

He led the women to a row of Civics. He had four hybrids on the lot. Maybelle thought that was odd. She had read that hybrids were hard to find in stock, but then she remembered she was in a part of the country where most people typically made their vehicle choices between a Chevy and a Ford pickup truck. It occurred to her that this dealership probably didn't sell many cars at all, and had probably never sold a hybrid. She pointed at a green one, which included the deluxe package with special wheels and seats, "How much is that one?"

He said, "We can do a payment plan on that one starting at $230 a month."

"I asked how much it costs. To buy. Cash."

"Purchase price is $18,999."

Maybelle pursed her lips and pointed at a red one which was the base model, "What about that one?"

"$15,999."

Maybelle said, "Let me talk to the sales manager."

"What?"

"I know you don't have the authority to negotiate. He does. I'll talk to him, but don't worry, I'll make sure you get the commission on the deal." She turned toward the showroom, with the salesman and Felicia tagging along behind her. The salesman looked bewildered. Felicia was smiling behind her hand and biting her lips to keep from laughing out loud.

Maybelle walked up to the door of the sales manager's office and waited politely until he hung up the phone, then she walked in and introduced herself. She said, "I'll give you $17,500 for the green Civic Hybrid."

He looked at her and said, "Ma'am, you need to discuss that with the salesman."

"Sir, I know he doesn't have the authority to drop the price that far on a cash deal. He'd just have to ask your permission. I'm cutting out the middle man. Will you sell me the car for $17,500 or not?"

He hemmed and hawed and mumbled about financing and lost profits from extras. Maybelle shook her head and put her palms up, shaking her head, "Well, I guess if you're not interested in selling it, I'll go buy a Prius." She turned and headed for the door. Felicia scrambled to keep up with her and the salesman virtually ran around her and blocked her exit.

"Ma'am, let's discuss this...."

Maybelle noticed the sales manager had not come out of his office, but he was standing at the door. There were no customers in the showroom and all the sales people were watching; most of them weren't even pretending to be doing any work. She shook her head and reached for the door handle, "There's nothing to discuss. I asked you if you'd sell me that car for seventeen-five. That's a yes or no question. You either will or you won't. I'm not inclined to dork around with this. I have things to do. I need a car. If you're not interested in my business, I'll find a dealership that is."

She reached for the door handle, and noticed that the salesman must have got a signal from the sales manager because he said, "Yes, ma'am. We'll sell you the car for $17,500."

She turned around and asked what the sales tax rate was. The salesman answered her. She took out a calculator and her checkbook, made some calculations and sat down at a table near the entrance. She wrote out a check for the selling price plus sales tax, and handed it to the salesman. He looked like he was going to pass out.

He said, "Oh, but we have to go to financing and figure out all the fees and add-ons."

Maybelle ignored the salesman, looking over his shoulder and locking eyes with the sales manager. "You agreed to sell me the car for that price. I paid you the agreed price, plus tax. You figure out how to add in the fees and all the other overcharges. Now please start the paperwork. I want to take immediate delivery."

The sales manager looked like he was going to have a stroke, he said, "That is utter fucking bullshit, lady! Who the hell do you think you are coming in here and dictating to us what you're going to spend on a car?"

Maybelle reached over to the salesman, took the check out of his hand and turned to the sales manager, saying loud enough for everyone in the place to hear her, "Who the hell I am is a cash-paying customer, mister. Deal's off!"

Looking around the showroom, she added, "No wonder you don't have any customers if that's the way you treat them." She started to tear up the check, but the general manager (who had been watching the whole drama from the second floor balcony), swooped in and grabbed it from her.

He shook her hand and said, "Ma'am, on behalf of my entire staff, I apologize. Believe me, we will have a sales meeting on the subject of customer service later today. We will, of course, get the car ready for you right away. We can have the paperwork finished and the car washed in an hour. Perhaps you'd like to go to lunch and then come back."

Maybelle said, "I've already had lunch. I'll wait." She sat down in a chair near the door and pulled a book from her tote. She smiled at Felicia and said, in an exaggerated Southern accent, "Thank you, Sugar, for driving me here. I'll drive myself home."

Felicia nodded and didn't say anything, because she was still clenching her teeth and trying not to make direct eye contact with Maybelle. Maybelle turned her head away from the sales floor and winked at Felicia. A few minutes later Maybelle's cell phone rang. When Maybelle answered, Felicia was laughing out loud. She managed to say, "The next time I buy a car, I want you to do the negotiating!"

Maybelle chuckled, covered her mouth with her other hand and said, "Deal."

Felicia added, "I thought you said you never bought a car before."

"I told you I never owned a car before. I've negotiated and bought lots of 'em that was paid for by my employer. I learned how to get a good deal because if I didn't, the purchasing department would chew my ass about it."

Forty five minutes later, the salesman came out of an interior office with a stack of papers. Maybelle signed them. When she was finished, he took her outside where the car was parked by the front door. He showed her the features and handed her the keys. He did not shake her hand. She noticed there was hardly any gas in the car, but decided not to bitch about that. She'd squeezed the dealership hard enough.

She gassed up at a station around the corner and then drove around a little to get the feel for her car. She liked it.

Next she pulled into a real estate office and asked where she might find a camera store (she had learned that Realtors generally know everything there is to know about their community and a realty office was often a better place to get local information than the chamber of commerce). The lady at the reception desk told her they sold cameras at WalMart. Maybelle shook her head and said she wanted a regular camera shop that sold lenses and camera accessories. The receptionist didn't know of any camera shops, but an agent who was hanging around in the waiting area did. She gave Maybelle directions.

Maybelle went off in search of a telephoto lens. She ended up buying two lenses and a tripod. After she retired the last time she got rid of her really big lenses and 35MM cameras, keeping only a couple of basic digital cameras. She'd regretted it ever since. The fact that she was retired didn't mean she was willing to let the quality of her pictures go to pot.

Satisfied with her day, she headed toward home in the late afternoon. Felicia called her about four o'clock to ask if she would be home for dinner. Maybelle said she didn't think she would be back that soon, so she asked Felicia to put a plate in her fridge. Felicia agreed.

Maybelle drove up into the mountains and took some pictures. She walked a little way up a trail, but did not venture too far because she had neither hiking boots nor GPS with her. A lot of people thought she was crazy and she admitted to taking risks a lot of people her age would never dream of doing, but to her mind she was not foolish, taking only calculated risks. Hiking without a GPS and boots wasn't a risk she was willing to take. Eventually, a half hour or so before dark, she drove home and parked in the driveway. She ate her dinner – cold – right out of the fridge, while watching the sunset, or what passed for a sunset behind looming clouds in the mountains.

After that, she checked her email and responded to a bunch of messages from friends and family. It occurred to her that she should follow the suggestion of her oldest nephew, the Microsoftee tech nerd, and put up a Facebook page, where her family and friends could check in on her at their convenience. She realized that made some sense, but she liked sending personal messages to individuals.

She was in bed by nine-thirty.

Chapter 5

The next morning she made coffee and went immediately to her chair by the door, perched her computer on her lap and started typing furiously.

Because of the war, when I got leave during my tenure in Vietnam, I didn't explore that country. I explored other countries in Southeast Asia. I went to Cambodia, before Nixon turned it into another theater of operations, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia and the Philippines. I went back to Japan a couple of times in the late Sixties when things were really bad in Vietnam, just because I wanted some peace and quiet. One of those trips ended up changing the future course of my life.

I had been knocking around Japan for a week or so when I came across a tiny Buddhist temple tucked away on the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere. I was wandering around the grounds taking pictures when an American male voice asked me if I would like some tea. I turned and looked into the face of an incredibly handsome blue-eyed man. It took a second or two to realize his head was shaved and he was wearing the robes of a Zen monk.

I was thrilled to run across someone who spoke English. By then my Japanese was passable, but it's always more comfortable to speak your native language. Plus, I was thirsty as hell, so I accepted the invitation to tea, and we walked back to the temple, where he gave me a guided tour.

We had Japanese tea, made in the traditional manner. It tasted wonderful. He offered me food, which I accepted. I don't remember what we ate, but I remember it was fabulous. Maybe the holiness of the people in that place somehow blessed the food and made it holy too. I don't know how that works, but I do know that there was something almost magical about that monastery.

He asked me what I was doing traveling around Japan by myself. I told him I was on furlough from my job in Saigon and I wanted a little peace and quiet. He asked me how much more time I had left on my vacation. I told him a couple of weeks. He invited me to spend them with his community.

I have no earthly idea why I did it – other than the tranquility and joy that infused the place must have already been seeping into my heart – but I accepted the invitation. Can you imagine _me_ in a Zen monastery? It makes me laugh just thinking about it. But, it wasn't so bad.

That particular monastery had both male and female residents. They put me in a room in the convent with the women. The only rules they gave me were that I had to observe the bedtime and meal schedules. I was supposed to be quiet except during my once-a-day meetings with Brother Andrew, who I learned was a former American GI. He had been with the occupation forces in Japan. He fell in love with the Orient and ended up as a Zen Master in this monastery after he rotated out of the Army.

Being quiet and staying out of the way wasn't hard for me. I spent those two weeks sleeping, eating the most wonderful food I'd ever tasted, and sitting in the garden soaking up the peace and sunshine, without the humidity of Vietnam. I never did get into meditation, but I can sit for hours without moving. Buddhist Masters have always thought that was hilarious. It turned out to be a great skill for a whole lot of reasons, but at that point it had the benefit of making me a good guest at the monastery.

That was the first time I stayed in a monastery. It was far from the last. I learned a little about the Buddhist religion, which I didn't understand, and still don't. I think I was born without a religious gene or something. I never really "got" the idea of organized religion. If you want to experience something sacred, I think you should just go sit on a rock, shut up and look around. I've been told that makes me a kind of natural Buddhist. Maybe that's true, but I never could get into all the fasting and self-denial stuff. I liked beer and cigarettes too much to be a good Buddhist – or Baptist either. I'll say that before anybody else chimes in with that observation.

Anyway, I learned that Buddhist monasteries are almost always open to guests, and most of the time they don't charge you, although they will usually (but not always) accept a donation. I learned also that many Christian convents and monasteries will put you up for nominal cost as well. The food in those places is simple, but it's almost always wonderful. It's a cheap way to travel, and it beats the hell out of Holiday Inn.

I spent two weeks soaking up the peace in Japan, and taking pictures. Brother Andrew asked me if I would send him a few of my pictures of the monastery. I sent him a half dozen, some color and some black and white. Brother Andrew and I continued to correspond until he died a few years later. I visited his monastery many times over the years. Remember that, it comes up again.

All the countries I visited in Asia were magnificent, but I liked Japan the best of any place I had ever been, until I went to the South Sea islands. I guess it was 1968 when I visited Fiji for the first time, I spent four weeks doing my own version of "island hopping" back towards Vietnam, only instead of launching a military invasion, I spent my days lounging on beautiful beaches, eating exotic fruit and taking hundreds of pictures.

By that point I had literally thousands of prints I developed myself in one or the other of the photo labs on the various bases to which I had been assigned. Whenever I moved from one assignment or one barracks to another, my photos took up more room than all the rest of my stuff combined. I had no place to store the stuff, but I could no longer haul it around with me everywhere I went.

I asked a friend what he thought I should do with my pictures. He suggested I get a safety deposit box in an American bank. I wanted to put my pictures in the bank in Saigon, but he talked me out of it. He offered to have his wife open a box in my name in a bank near where they lived in Alexandria, Virginia. That sounded like a good idea. I sent my negatives and all my prints to her and she opened a safety box for me.

After that, I was once again free to roam because all my earthly possessions (other than those prints) fit in one Navy-issued duffel bag plus a camera bag.

After exploring the South Seas, I ventured a little further afield. In 1969, I went to India. I didn't like the cities of India at all, because they were dirty, crowded and the poverty was so awful, I couldn't even look at it. (And that's saying something considering I'd spent more than fifteen years in the Far East and I'd seen a lot of Oriental-style poverty which made the poverty I grew up with look like the lap of luxury.)

The countryside of India is amazing, however. I always felt that it is kind of a negative aspect of my character that I am much more interested in scenery and nature than I am in people. I used to feel guilty about that. I quit feeling guilty about anything a while back. It's just the way I am. I accept it and others will just have to deal with it.

In India I concentrated on the beauty of the land and ignored the people as much as possible. I also got out of there pretty damned quick, and never went back.

The next year, I went to the Middle East. I am totally uninterested in politics and current events so I rarely read the newspapers even now. Then I was ignorant of politics, history and current events and so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The entire Mideast was a tinderbox, and it was stupid of me to go there by myself, but I wanted to see Egypt. The Pyramids are amazing and the museums in Cairo and Alexandria are some of the best I've ever seen, but I didn't like Egypt. Maybe it had something to do with the way they looked at an American woman traveling alone. It's not a smart thing for a woman to travel alone in a Muslim country, but of course I was barely aware that there was such a religion as Islam, and I sure as hell didn't know anything about it, so I did things I shouldn't have done out of ignorance. Can you say "Ugly American"?

Israel was a huge contrast to the rest of the Middle East. It was clean and modern. I was probably the only tourist in history who went there to see the scenery and not the religious shrines. My guides didn't know what to do with me. I got some good photos of Masada and some of the coast, but if you're not a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim, there's not much of interest in Israel, although I did find the cooperative farms and agriculture interesting. That kind of offended my guides, who wanted me to be interested in their religion. At the time the entire country was an armed camp and even I could feel the war-fever rising. I decided to clear out before I got caught in the cross-fire. I lived in a war zone; I wasn't particularly interested in vacationing in one, too.

Iran had some beautiful places, but it was kind of creepy to me. I had no idea about the political storm that was brewing there, but I knew I didn't feel safe.

Iraq was a huge disappointment. I expected the "cradle of Western civilization" to be a little more civilized. One of my favorite maps when I was in primary school back in Arkansas was a _National Geographic_ map of the ancient world. Babylon lay between the Tigris and Euphrates, with all the other magical-sounding cities around: Nineveh, Asher, Ur. I had envisioned it as a sort of jungle paradise, with hanging gardens and beautiful women. Modern Baghdad was a serious disappointment.

As it turned out, I found the entire Fertile Crescent that gave birth to Western civilization and three world religions to be a pretty desolate and otherwise uninteresting place. Maybe it was different a few thousand years ago. Then again, maybe it was not. Maybe the desolation of the place made people interested in the spirit world and eager to look forward to some kind of afterlife that would be better than the barrenness of the place where they actually lived. It's a theory anyway.

In any case, I felt that if I was going to be a world traveler, I should at least see the Middle East. I saw it once, and that was more than enough for me. The only way I would go back to the Middle East would be if I could score an assignment to take one of those barge trips up the Nile.... but, that's not going to happen. I keep forgetting that I'm retired.

I cut my trip short and returned to Saigon before my furlough was over. That turned out to be a good thing, because it meant I had the chance to take another vacation later in the year.

I decided to go back to Japan near the end of the summer. I made arrangements to stay at Brother Andrew's monastery for a few days. While I was there, another guest arrived. He was a tall, sunburned white guy, who arrived carrying a small backpack and a huge camera bag. I think I fell in love with him just watching him walk up the driveway. Even now, I couldn't say if it was the fabulous camera equipment or his incredible blue eyes that attracted me most. I will give you a hint: I saw the cameras first.

His name was Tim Jones. He was a photographer and writer for the _National Geographic_. Given the reverence I held for that magazine, I greeted him like a groupie would greet a rock-star. As it turned out, we sort of had mutual admiration thing going on. Brother Andrew had showed him my photos and he liked them a lot.

We spent a few days at the monastery resting and relaxing. When we could sneak away somewhere to talk, we spent hours talking about photography and his life as an itinerant photojournalist. Soon we got tired of sneaking around, so we decided to travel together for the last week of my vacation.

We went to Okinawa. I hadn't been there in years and Tim had never been there. We hung out on the beach and drank super cheap American beer that I bought on the base and he told me amazing stories about the places he'd been. We really liked each other. Correction, I fell in love with the man. I don't know that he was quite that smitten with me at that point, but I was there and he was a young, healthy man. We were staying in an inn that was right on the beach, and I had access to the post exchange to replenish our supply of beer. Use your imagination.

Unfortunately, Tim was about the farthest thing in the world from an acceptable boyfriend for someone who was by then a Naval warrant officer. He was originally from Oakland, California. He registered for the draft when he was eighteen, and obtained a college deferment. When he graduated from college, he duly notified his Draft Board of his status. Then he went off on what was supposed to be a vacation to Australia. He fell so in love with the Down Under, he got a job as a photographer on a dive boat that took tourists out on the Great Barrier Reef. He never went back to the US. In fact, at some point a few years later, he turned in his American passport and became an Australian citizen.

While he was working on the dive boat, he met a photographer from _National Geographic_ who liked his work and encouraged him to apply for a job with the Society. _National Geographic_ initially hired him as a photographer; later he started writing his own articles. When he wasn't on assignment he spent most of his time in the South Pacific, taking pictures and lying on a beach somewhere. It is my understanding he typically did not spend his time alone. Sailors are not the only people who have a girl in every port. A lot of journalists do, too. Tim, it seems, had more than his fair share to hear him and his buddies tell the stories. Tim was without a doubt the happiest person I ever met. He made everybody around him happy as well.

After our initial fling in Japan, we decided that it would be better for us to be friends at a distance to avoid compromising my career.

Well, actually, I have to admit, I decided that. Tim wanted me to resign from the Navy and travel with him. He thought I was good enough to make a living as a photographer, maybe even with the _National Geographic_. I was thrilled that he thought I was good enough to play in his league, and, while I was tempted, I was unable to bring myself to leave the security of my Navy family even for a man I loved as much as I did Tim.

Tim offered to get some of my photos published, but I was not supposed to moonlight. I told him I'd make photography my second career when I retired from the Navy. He wasn't happy about my decision, but he offered to help me get a job whenever I decided to leave the Navy. I expected that to be many years in the future. I was only thirty five. Even though I was coming up on twenty years of service, and would soon be eligible to retire, I had no plans to do so.

Tim introduced me to a few of his photographer friends and over the next couple of years, during my furloughs I hung out in Australia and Southeast Asia with the photography and press crowd. They were interesting people, although they were way more laid-back and liberal (read: anti-War) than my button-down Navy training could tolerate for long.

I saw Tim occasionally and we established a relationship which I think these days is called "friends with benefits." It worked out well for both of us, but every time we spent time together, I was terrified someone was going to see me with him and I would get in trouble. I was a high level executive assistant to the top brass at Navy Command Saigon, a U.S. Navy warrant officer, for God's sake! Hanging out in cheap hotels in Bangkok with a draft dodger, who had turned his back on America, and a bunch of his pinko liberal reporter friends, bordered on professional suicide, if not out and out treason.

Tim and I talked (and argued) about that a lot. I loved Tim, but the idea of making a living as a photographer seemed too risky to me. I liked my job and I wanted to get my 20 years in with the Navy. I wanted to retire, and then pursue the rest of my life. The Navy had given me a home, financial security and a family of sorts. I felt I owed it to the Navy to fulfill my side of the bargain. I guess that makes me an idiot. Or maybe it just makes me loyal. I confess to being both. The result of my loyalty to the Navy was that I deeply hurt a person who loved me and who wanted us to build a life together. I think the idiot side of me predominated in that decision.

Our relationship cooled off after that, in part because I didn't want to be seen with him (which hurt him, I know) and in part because his career was starting to take off and he was on the go constantly. He was the one and only love of my life, my most important professional mentor and the best friend I ever had. None of that ever changed. Amazingly, all of that survived my initial rejection of his invitation to join his world.

As it happens, I didn't get kicked out of the Navy for hanging out with undesirables. I retired suddenly before my C.O. had the chance to throw me in the brig for insubordination.

It would be a gross understatement to say that by 1973 the situation in Vietnam had deteriorated. The fact is, it was a freaking train wreck and those of us at Command who were willing to look knew it. Unfortunately, the American public had been distracted by the presidential election and the Watergate scandal. Amidst all of that, the American public seemed to lose interest in the war in Vietnam.

Uncle Ho, who was one smart dude, noticed. Suddenly the Viet Cong were everywhere and even North Vietnamese regular troops seemed to be moving into a lot of places we thought were secure. Of course, our so-called allies, the South Vietnamese, were absolutely no help. I always had the sense that the VC had infiltrated the ARVN ranks, because it seemed to me that no real army could be that damned incompetent! Whenever any of us brought that up, Command would shoot us down and give us the government's canned bullshit speeches about what a good ally our South Vietnamese friends were. The staff joked about wanting some of whatever the Brass were smoking when they came up crap like that. Anyway, by early 1973, anybody with eyes could see that Vietnam was about to collapse. With hundreds of thousands of Americans in country, that would be a bad thing – a very, very bad thing both for the Americans and the thousands of Vietnamese civilians who worked for us.

The Paris Peace Talks were a joke. Nixon was too busy trying to save his political ass to pay attention to us. Kissinger was trying to solidify his reputation as a statesman and make a place for himself in the history books, without really doing anything about the actual situation in Vietnam. It seemed to me (and to a lot of the military personnel I talked to) that the US military forces in Vietnam were totally on our own. We knew that we were going to lose the war, and we knew that the American public would blame the soldiers, not the Pentagon.

A few of us wanted to start making plans to evacuate American military and civilians and to try and come up with a plan to evacuate at least some of the Vietnamese civilians who had worked for us. We had to do that on the Q.T. because the Brass threw a total shit fit at the very suggestion.

Up to that point in my career, I had been the model administrative staffer. I did what I was told. I didn't offer opinions about policy matters that were not my concern. I was there to support and implement decisions made by others and not to meddle in the decision-making process itself. By early 1973, my rising tide of alarm combined with the fact that I had been in country longer than anybody else on the Command staff, and quite possibly the entire Navy, allowed me to dare to voice my concern.

I told my commanding officer I wanted to arrange an appointment with Admiral Zumwalt. He wanted to know why I wanted to see The Man, and I told him the truth about my intentions. He denied my request and told me if I so much as opened my mouth on that subject again, he have me court-marshaled for insubordination.

I stewed about that for a while, and decided to go over his head. I went directly to Zumwalt's assistant and asked for an appointment. She tipped off my CO who chewed my ass most of a whole afternoon, but (interestingly) did not actually accuse me of insubordination. I never did get my appointment with Zumwalt, but I was so pissed off, I told my CO I wanted to retire.

He readily agreed because in his opinion, despite many years of stellar service, I had turned into a malcontent and troublemaker, which meant I needed to be got rid of. Retirement would be neater – not to mention quicker and quieter – than a court marshal or even a dishonorable discharge. The military is justly famous for the fact that it can take an eternity to make and/or implement what should be a simple decision, but it can move like greased lightning when it has to. The Navy processed my retirement in record time. By the summer of 1973, I was a civilian. I was just shy of thirty-nine years old.

I packed my duffel and camera bag, containing all my worldly possessions other than my photos that were in the safety deposit box in Virginia, and hitched a ride with a Marine who was going to pick up some congressmen at the Saigon airport. When he dropped me off in front of the terminal, it dawned on me that I had no place to go. I studied the departure board for a while and then went to the counter and bought a ticket for Brisbane, Australia.

When I arrived at the airport in Brisbane, I called the dive outfitter where Tim had worked and asked if they knew where he was. They gave me a number for the _National Geographic_ office in Sydney.

I called that number and explained to the woman who answered the phone that I was trying to reach Tim. She told me he was traveling in rural China and couldn't be reached. She paused and, taking into consideration the fact that virtually all of Tim's friends were in the business, she asked, "You wouldn't happen to be a photographer would you?"

I said, "Well, until recently I was in the United States Navy, but photography was always my hobby. Tim's told me many times that he thought I was good enough to be a professional. That's actually why I'm calling. I'm looking for a job."

She paused for a long time. "Where are you?"

"I'm in Brisbane."

She told me that one of the senior editors from the _National Geographic_ headquarters in the US was in Sydney interviewing prospective photographers. She invited me to meet with him. I hopped the next flight to Sydney and was blown away by the awesome beauty of the city. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to explore it. I went directly to the local office of the _National Geographic_ where I interviewed with a couple of people, and showed them a few pictures that I had with me. They told me that Tim had mentioned my name as a good potential candidate for a cub photographer. They offered to give me a shot. At the end of that day, I walked out of the office as the newest photographer on the staff of the _National Geographic_ magazine.

Even today as I sit here reflecting on that experience, I can't believe it. The ultimate beyond-my-wildest-dream job simply fell into my lap at the very moment when I needed it most. How could that happen? I have no idea, but there has not been one day since then when I didn't spend at least a moment or two feeling deeply grateful for that miracle.

The Navy had been my family and security blanket for twenty years. The _National Geographic_ would be my life for the next twenty five years. I thought I had seen the world in the Navy. As it turned out, I had only just begun to experience the wonders of the world!

My first assignment for _National Geographic_ was in South America. I arrived in Buenos Aires just before Christmas 1973. It was hot, humid and miserable, at least according to the writer I was assigned to travel with. I had just spent a decade in Vietnam. I guess I was somewhat immune to humidity and heat, or at least I was used to being sticky and sweaty all the time. I annoyed the hell out of him with my ability to tolerate the heat.

He got even with me when we got to Peru the following July. It was winter, snowy, and unbelievably cold. I had never experienced cold like that, and I was miserable. Nick Carpenter was from Denver. He loved the mountain cold. The more I bitched about it, the more he chirped about how refreshing it was. I wanted to kill him.

Nick and I were never the best traveling companions. Not only did we like different climates, we liked different kinds of food, different drinks and we even smoked different brands of cigarettes. We argued constantly about almost everything else, but when it came to work, we were great partners. He would tell me the general thrust of his story, and I took pictures that told that story. Then he would sit down and write the article using the pictures as his outline. We may have got on each others' nerves personally, but professionally we were like Yin and Yang. That went a long way towards turning us into friends, although I have to admit that we have continued to push each others buttons and annoy each other for the fun of it.

We spent three years together in South America, visiting remote Amazon villages and attending Carnival in Argentina on several occasions. We rode planes, trains, buses, as well as donkeys, mules and horseback. Mostly we walked. Every now and then, Nick would take a leave to go home and visit his family in Denver. While he was gone, I'd go to a beach somewhere and hang around until he came back. After that, we'd take off together again.

Nick and I had been born in the same month. We fought and bickered like siblings. We occasionally told people we were fraternal twins, and people always believed us. We adored each other, and we fought like cats and dogs, usually at the same time. We sort of adopted each other as family.

In 1976, Nick quit the _National Geographic_ and returned to Denver to marry his high school sweetheart. I was alone again, although we kept in touch. They named their first child Bella. Nick tried to convince me she was named after me. I never did believe him. His wife was Italian. The kid was probably named after somebody in the family. I can't imagine a woman naming her kid after a female friend of her husband's whom she'd never met! Later he had a couple of kids by his second wife. All his kids and now his grandkids call me Aunt May.

I rattled around South America by myself for a few months, taking pictures of whatever caught my eye and sending them back to Washington as stock photos. You'd think I'd dislike traveling alone after traveling with Nick for so long, but I discovered that I loved traveling by myself. I didn't have to put up with Nick's whining and bullshit. I could go where I wanted and take the pictures I wanted to take, as opposed to the pictures he ordered me to take. That was when I started developing my own photographic "eye". I had a lot of fun snapping random pictures of whatever struck my fancy.

Interestingly, when you look at pictures I've taken when I'm not on a particular assignment, certain themes emerge. Maybe it's a kind of sickness, but whenever I was between assignments, I loved to go off and take pictures, honing my skills and always trying to learn more about what could be done with a camera.

I loved traveling alone and probably would have been happy to go on assignments alone, too. Fortunately (or not), that isn't the way _National Geographic_ worked at the time. First of all, they did not allow their female reporters or photographers to travel alone. Period. They didn't like having their male reporters or photographers traveling alone, either, but they really frowned on women going alone to remote places. They were concerned about our safety, and rightly so, if you look at it rationally.

Unfortunately, I never looked at it rationally. I always took my employer's concerns for my safety as patronizing and sexist. I almost got fired over my tantrums about that on several occasions. I have never been very good about letting people try to take care of me. (Note to self: At my present stage of life, I might want to work on that.)

Eventually the _Geographic_ enticed me back to working with a partner by offering to send me to Africa (my decision to go was influenced by the fact that they threatened to fire me if I didn't accept an assignment with a partner soon). _National Geographic_ planned to do an entire edition of the magazine on the Dark Continent. They assigned me and a senior writer to start in Alexandria and work our way south. They gave us a whopping year and a half to explore wherever we wanted to go.

I suppose I was overwhelmed by Africa in part because I knew so little about it when I first arrived. My new partner, Daniel Worthington, was the perfect person to introduce me to the wonders of Africa. He had been born and raised in what was then called Rhodesia, a third generation white African. He loved Africa, in all its dysfunctional glory, and he showed me things that made me fall in love with it, too.

We started in Alexandria, and then skirted the Northern Coast as far as Casablanca. From there we kind of literally bounced around, going as far inland as we could, while avoiding as much as possible the various civil wars and tribal squabbles going on in sub-Saharan Africa. When we got tired of the jungle, we moved to the savanna. When that got too hot or we wanted to relax, we went to the coast and spent a few days some remote beach. After resting up, we headed back to the interior again.

We went on safari in several countries, and we watched the migration of the wildebeests from several vantage points. That is one amazing sight that even an IMAX can't begin to capture. We visited every manner of tribal village, some friendly, some not so much. We visited Jane Goodall and her chimps in Gombe and Diane Fossey and her gorillas in Rwanda. We steered clear of South Africa because Daniel was an outspoken critic of apartheid and South Africa was still firmly in the hands of white supremacists.

Daniel loved and despaired over Africa in almost equal measure. I came to share his feelings to an extent. Africa is a gorgeous place, filled with the kind of incredibly beautiful geography that I love. It is inhabited by delightful people if you meet them on a personal level. Individually, the Africans I met (both the black and white Africans) were among the most friendly, funny and generous people I've ever met. But when they get together in groups, they can behave with monstrous savagery.

Everywhere we went virtually everyone we talked to was almost frantically worried about Africa's future. It never seemed to me that any of them were doing much about it other than wringing their hands and blaming other people for their problems. Individually, the people I met were wonderful. Collectively, Africa was a mess. It does not appear to me that it's made any real progress in the decades since.

I stayed in Africa for almost five years, on a series of different assignments with several different writers. Eventually it came to be too much, emotionally. My gypsy life had started taking a toll physically. By then, I was in my late forties. I couldn't hike as long or as fast as I had before. I couldn't take the heat or the cold as well as I had before (not that I could ever take the cold very well in the first place). The scenery started to be repetitious. A savanna full of elephants and giraffes is beautiful the first hundred times or more you see it. After a while it got to be not so special, especially after I learned how much damage those elephants can do to a Land Rover if you get too close and piss them off. Besides, the general emotional malaise that infected Africa started to rub off on me and I became depressed. I have no tolerance for that kind of nonsense, so I took it as a sign I needed to move on.

I requested a change of assignment.

Maybelle stood up and stretched. She had been sitting at the computer for hours, barely moving anything but her fingertips, stalking her memories like she stalked big game with a camera: by sitting absolutely motionless and letting them drift by. She needed to stretch.

She decided there was no time like the present to put those new lenses through their paces, so she packed a lunch of nuts, cheese and dried fruit, filled her backpack with several bottles of frozen water, slung her camera bag over her shoulder and, literally, headed for the hills.

She passed Felicia in the yard. Felicia was weeding her herb garden. She said, "You're getting off to a kind of late start, aren't you?"

"I got distracted by a project I'm working on. I won't be gone long, but I may not be back by the time you have dinner ready. Don't wait on me."

"Actually, I have a church meeting this afternoon, so I put on a pot of soup. I'll make some cornbread to go with it. I'll leave you a container in your fridge."

"Wonderful. I have to tell you, soup is about my very most favorite food, second only behind a really great stew or curry."

Felicia said, "That's good to know. I don't know much about curries, but I can make some killer soups and stews, mostly in the wintertime."

Maybelle said she'd look forward to that, then she waved and headed off for her hike. She had a little trouble adjusting to the weight of the big lens bouncing against her hip. She decided she had been unrealistic when she bought that lens. A woman her age had no business schlepping around the forest lugging around a telephoto lens. In the future, she would reserve the large lens for photo shoots she could drive to and set up a tripod. The lens was, however, awesome and she got some wonderful close-ups of birds and various tiny critters from distant vantage points.

Late in the afternoon, she sat down on a fallen log to eat her snack. After a while she sensed that she was not alone. She sat very still and waited. She could tell by the way the person moved he or she knew their way around in the woods. By the sound of the footfalls, she guessed it was a man, but it could be a large woman.

What she couldn't tell was whether or not the person was friendly. Encounters in the wild never failed to feel potentially dangerous, because they were. Maybelle had never carried a weapon, but when she was younger she always felt she could defend herself. Suddenly she realized how old she was and how stupid it was for her to continue to traipse around the woods alone as she had in her youth. She might have sat there and cried at the thought, but somebody was coming, and she needed to remain alert.

It turned out the somebody was an artist from the tidewater area in Virginia. He was sketching and photographing mountain scenery that he planned to turn into paintings over the winter. He walked into the clearing and held his hands out in the universal gesture of "I mean no harm." Maybelle greeted him and invited him to join her. He sat down and took out a bottle of water and a snack of his own. He commented on her camera equipment. She told him she was a retired photographer. She grinned, "I'm retired in that I don't get paid for taking pictures any more. I still take them, out of habit and passion."

He laughed, "I know what you mean. I'm supposed to be retired, too. I was an art teacher. I spent my whole career trying to teach children to create art. Now I'm spending my retirement creating my own."

She smiled and they sat companionably for a while, listening to the birds and the wind in the trees.

He asked to see her pictures on the digital view screen, and was bowled over by them. He gave her his card and asked if she would send him a few of the pictures. "I'll pay you, of course."

She shook her head, and said, "No payment is necessary. I'll email you a few of the pictures later today. Make beautiful paintings out of my pictures, and sell them to others to enjoy. That's what pictures are for. Maybe you could send me a small 5x7 watercolor or something."

"Gladly."

Having finished their snacks, they walked together toward the town. He had parked a mile or so up the road from her house, and he offered to give her a lift home. She accepted and invited him in for soup. They watched the sunset together on the back stoop and he left for home shortly after dark.

The minute his car pulled out of the driveway Maybelle's phone rang. Felicia was calling to make sure Maybelle was okay and to inquire into the identity of the strange man. More the latter, Maybelle thought irritably. She reminded herself that Felicia was just looking out for her, but Maybelle's prickly nature took Felicia's concern as an invasion of her privacy.

She forced herself not to give a sarcastic answer, and informed Felicia the man was an artist she had met in the woods, which drew a lecture from Felicia about the dangers of talking to strangers and/or going into the woods alone and/or bringing strange people (especially men) into your house. Maybelle tried not to sound as annoyed as she felt. She simply told Felicia she had to clean up from dinner and she was tired. Felicia's nosiness irritated her, but she understood that it was mixed with genuine concern. She also knew that Felicia was right, which bothered her most of all.

Instead of going to bed, she went to her writing spot.

## Chapter 6

She set down her coffee cup and wished for the ten millionth time she had never quit smoking, because a half pack or so of smokes would have tasted good sitting at a computer late in the evening reminiscing and reflecting on her life. She shook off the thoughts of delicious cigarette smoke curling around her head and let her mind meander back into the past while her fingers tapped out the story.

My next assignment was another one of those events in my life that leave me scratching my head and wondering how on earth I could have been so lucky. I was assigned to the team that was documenting the life and work of Jacques Cousteau on his amazing research vessel, _Calypso_. I spent a year on the ship and then another year with Philippe Cousteau doing both marine and land shoots.

It was a high profile assignment, which was a signal from the magazine that I had made it into the top rung of photographers. Of course, I was such a clueless idiot I didn't realize that at the time, and I was temporarily without a mentor to explain it to me because Tim was off in Siberia or somewhere and Nick was teaching photography at the University of Denver and raising a family.

That was a tough assignment for me. I had always worked either by myself or with one partner who had always been a man. On the Cousteau assignment, I had to learn to work and live in very close quarters with a team. What was more, the team included a lot of smart, ambitious people, many of whom had enormous egos. There were both men and women, which added sexual tension to the mix of egos and ambitions. It got real interesting at times.

I was used to the wide open spaces and lots of solitude. Living with a bunch of people crowded into such a small space was a challenge. The one thing I didn't have trouble with was sea-sickness, but some of the others did. That was unpleasant.

I handled my discomfort with the situation by doing what I always do with interpersonal issues: I ignored the people around me and focused only on what I could see through the camera lens. The scientists and crew thought I was kind of stand-offish but a consummate professional. Among that bunch of workaholics geniuses, a person could get away with that.

Overall, despite my difficulties in adjusting, I think it was well worth the effort. I was working with not only the best photographers in the world, but also living and working with amazingly smart scientists from several fields. A couple of the scientists sort of made it their business to educate me a little which they believed would improve my photos. They opened my eyes to some of the wondrous mysteries of biology, geography, history and archeology. That fed my mind, and also helped my career in more ways than I could ever have imagined. It did help my photography because it broadened my scope of vision and imagination. It also got me interested in reading books. Up until then, I more or less confined most of my reading to the _Geographic_ itself and photography magazines. I became a bit of a science nerd, if you can believe that.

In addition to taking photos of fish and other underwater marine life at the request of various writers, the photos I took of the skies and the sunrises and sunsets from the ship in all kinds of weather and all kind of water are amazing. I've published almost every one of them at one time or another.

During that assignment I learned to SCUBA and to take pictures under water. The first time a great white shark three times my size swam right in front of me, I thought I was going to die of fright, but after a while I got used to the marine life. I never loved diving the way some of the others on _Calypso_ did. For one thing, I was never as good a swimmer as others on the team, but then I was swimming with usually forty or more pounds of camera equipment, so I felt okay about asking them to cut me some slack. I always told people that the fact I didn't even learn to swim until I was twenty was a life-long liability when it came to my lack of enthusiasm for deep-sea diving. Those damned sharks, eels, 'cudas, and other scary critters had a lot to do with it, too. Most people have always seen me as more or less fearless, and on land I usually was (often when I'd have been better off to be scared shitless). Underwater, I was a regular Nervous Nelly.

That was a difficult gig in a lot of ways, but I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity. I learned a lot. I had fun and I made some lasting friends. Perhaps most importantly, working with a team made me realize one thing I had been missing by schlepping around the world by myself or with only one other person for a decade: community.

Maybelle stopped writing, got up and stretched. She did a little yoga to work out the kinks and then got ready for bed.

She noticed the moon was full and the mountains were amazing, so she went downstairs, set up a camera on a tri-pod, attached her biggest lens, and sat on the back stoop, taking night shots of the moon and stars and the mountains and sipping a cup of hot chocolate. She could tell the photos were spectacular. It occurred to her that she hadn't submitted any photos to magazines since the spread for the scientific journal. She knew these merited publication.

She decided to submit queries for photo articles to some magazines in North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia that might be interested in mountain shots. She might be old and decrepit, but she still had a great eye. Sometimes she had trouble holding the camera still, so she increasingly relied on tripods. She loved sharing great pictures with others, and, she had to admit, she loved seeing her work, and her name, in print.

She finished her no-longer-hot chocolate and emailed copies of a couple of her best shots of the moon to her family members who used email. They all loved to get photos from her, although some of them with slow Internet connections bitched about the large size of the files.

She sat back and grinned, looking at the man in the moon smiling down at her. Suddenly getting old didn't seem so bad to her. She and Mrs. P were the matriarchs of the family now. Mrs. Pennington was "Granny P" to every single one of them ... even Lucy sometimes called her that.

And Maybelle? Maybelle was Auntie May to two generations of nieces and nephews. How could that be a bad thing?

She checked her email to see if the first of the next generation had arrived yet. Frank Jr.'s oldest grand-daughter was due to deliver a baby any day. Maybelle was kind of happy to know that the family was Methodist instead of Baptist, which meant they were able to plan a christening party. The entire clan planned to gather for that event.

They all assumed Maybelle would be the photographer for the event. They assumed wrong. She would arrange for a photographer who specialized in pictures of people be at the christening. Maybelle generally hated having her own picture taken, but she wanted pictures of her and Granny P with the baby and all of the nieces, nephews and assorted other family she collected and "adopted" over the years.

She went to bed knowing that the next day, she would tackle the part of her story that would be difficult to write about.

## Chapter 7

I was to turn 50 in 1984. I didn't feel 50. I could run circles around most of the other 50-year olds I knew. Hell, I could run circles around a lot of 25-year-olds I knew. But, the experience with the Cousteau team made me think about community, home and family in a new way.

I had spent 20 years in the Navy without setting foot on the American mainland. After I joined the _National Geographic_ , I spent my time in South America, Africa and most of the Seven Seas, and had never given a thought to visiting the United States. As I approached the half century mark, I decided I wanted to see my own country. I'd seen virtually all of the rest of the world other than Europe, and I had absolutely no desire to go there.

Suddenly, at mid-life, I had an overwhelming yen to see America.

I called my bureau chief and told him what I wanted to do. I said that I thought a photo shoot of America, from Sea to Shining Sea, through the eyes of someone who hadn't seen it in more than 30 years might be interesting. He agreed and said he'd pitch it to the editorial staff. They loved it.

In fact, they suggested that Tim Jones and I work on the project. He was divorced, and between assignments. I thought it odd that I hadn't run into him lately, but learned that he had been going to a lot of remote and dangerous places Americans couldn't go but an Australian could: China, Russia, Cuba, Communist Vietnam.

Turns out Tim had no desire to see the USA. I thought he might want to see me, but I guessed that ship had sailed. I realized I still kind of carried a torch for him and I was a little hurt that he didn't jump at the chance to work with me.

Instead the _National Geographic_ found another ex-patriot American writer/photographer, Melissa Bainbridge. Melissa is about twelve years younger than me. She had lived in Ireland for most of her adult life, when she wasn't traveling for the _National Geographic_ or some other magazine. Her specialty was nature writing, especially about birds and animal migrations. Most recently she had spent five years studying penguins in Antarctica for a research institute. She, too, had asked for a different assignment, preferably one in a location where the temperature occasionally rose above zero.

Neither of us was sure we liked the prospect of working with another woman. We had each spent our entire careers working with men, and, frankly, neither of us even had many women friends. We decided to see if we were compatible by going on a vacation together.

Melissa wanted to thaw out after her stint in Antarctica, and I'd never seen a beach I didn't love, so we decided to meet in Florida. We planned to spend a couple of weeks hanging out in the sun and sand to see if we could stand each other. Turns out we both hated Florida, but we were instant friends and compatible travel companions.

_National Geographic_ generally preferred women to travel with men, but since we were going to be traveling in America where we spoke the language and we thought we knew the culture, they decided to let us travel together. (We were wrong about that cultural familiarity part. The America of 1984 had little in common with the America I left in the early Fifties.)

Melissa and I had a lot in common. She had a rough childhood, too, and had left her home in Texas the day after she graduated from high school, spending her graduation money on a one-way ticket to Europe. She spent most of her twenties working as a nanny for several European aristocrats and one jet setter. In those jobs she traveled everywhere in Europe, and learned several languages.

Melissa visited Ireland on a vacation with one of her employers, and fell so in love with the people and the land, she quit her job and stayed when her employer's vacation was over. She got a job as a waitress and barmaid in a fishing town. She married a fisherman and settled down. Her husband was killed in a fishing accident after they had been married only a couple of years. She learned early in her marriage that she couldn't have children, so after her husband died she resumed her gypsy ways, but she maintained her home in Ireland among her husband's family, which had adopted her as one of their own.

She got a job as a nature photographer for an Irish magazine after submitting a portfolio of photos she had taken around the village where she lived.

We were kindred spirits and soul-mates almost from the first day we met, but that didn't mean we always got along. On the contrary, we fought like sisters from the beginning. Unlike a lot of women, we always pulled our punches and never really tried to hurt each other when we argued. We always made up after a spat. We adopted each other as "sisters" and we still get together somewhere in the world for a couple of weeks at least once a year. In recent years since we've both retired it's been more like two or three times a year.

We have a blast. I take pictures of whatever I see around us. She writes outrageous stories, that range from the merely blasphemous to the totally pornographic, mainly because she knows I'm so straight-laced it always embarrasses me. Then we fight about how awful she is, and end up getting drunk at least once. She's a terrible influence on me, but I adore her.

Anyway, after our two weeks of R&R in Florida, we decided to work together. We bought a pickup camper, using our expense account from _National Geographic_ , and embarked on what turned out to be a year long trek across America. Neither of us knew what to expect. We had both left the United States mainland when we were still in our teens and neither of us had ever visited again. Everything about America was big and loud and garish. In many ways we were each visiting a country with a culture that was as alien as any foreign country we'd ever visited.

We didn't always like what we found. Correction: we frequently disliked what we found in America. It was the 1980's: Greed was Good and Yuppies were living high and running amok everywhere we went. There were several times during that project we almost packed it in. The only reason we didn't was because, while Melissa had a home to return to, I didn't.

We were both city-haters, so we decided to try to cross the country without going through too many really big cities, or at least without stopping for long in any of them. We wanted to stick to the small towns and rural areas. Melissa and I are both naturalists at heart. She could take pictures almost as well as I could, and we discovered that I could write a half-way decent sentence if she checked my spelling and grammar. [That was before computers with spell-check when we had to actually tote around a paper dictionary, if you can even imagine such a thing.]

We fully collaborated on the project. We both took photos and we wrote our articles together. Melissa and I were a lot alike, but we looked at the world through very different eyes. She looked at a landscape and saw the animals and plants. I looked at the same landscape and saw the geography, the form and shape of the land, and the colors. I look at reality in terms of color and shape. She looked at reality in terms of the living things in it. Between the two of us, we seemed to be able to see a complete picture.

Minus people, of course. Neither of us was particularly fond of the people we encountered on our journey. We weren't prejudiced against Americans only. We concluded that we didn't care much for most of the people in most of the places we had visited in our travels over the years. We were both more interested in the landscape and the natural environment of the places. Therefore, we avoided populated areas and stuck to the byways and the wilderness. We spent a lot of time in the back country of the National Parks.

The series was kind of a hit, especially among American photojournalists, many of whom had also spent most of their adult lives outside of the United States. We had a great time. Life was good, but after a year of wandering aimlessly around in America, Melissa grew homesick for her adopted family and the kinder, gentler world of Ireland. She had turned her back on America in her youth and had found nothing in our travels that made her rethink that decision. She said she preferred to stay in Ireland, surrounded by her husband's family which had become her own.

She hung around long enough to celebrate my 50th birthday in a cabin by a frozen lake in western Colorado. We toasted the end of our collaboration and my birthday. Our wonderful partnership was over. Yet another great adventure was ending. It was a somber celebration.

The next day, I dropped Melissa off on the sidewalk in front of the airport in Denver and drove away in the now-battered pickup truck. It was Christmas Day and I was once again alone in the world with no place in particular to go. I was sick and tired of that shit.

I had lived a half century. I had tens of thousands of photos that had outgrown a safety deposit box in a bank and taken residence in a fire proof file cabinet at the public library in Alexandria, Virginia. My Navy buddy's wife had divorced him years before, but she and I had become friends and she still looked after my photos.

I had plenty of money in the bank because I had saved most of my income when I was on active duty. After I retired from the Navy, I had my pension deposited directly into my bank account and had never touched it, because I lived on my salary from _National Geographic_. The _National Geographic_ didn't pay very much, but it paid all my travel expenses. I had no home or apartment. My only expenses were safety deposit box fees, clothes and personal items. My wardrobe and personal habits were often described by my traveling partners as Spartan when they were being kind and just disgusting when they were being truthful, so I spent little on clothes or personal items other than camera equipment. I have always made it my business to have the newest and best camera equipment made. My equipment was my bread and butter, and I spared no expense on it. Despite my camera habit, I ended up saving most of my salary from the _Geographic_ , too.

I knew my bureau chief would instantly grant a request for a leave of absence, probably without question. Most other photographers took time off every year or so. I had not requested any extended time off in more than a decade. As it turned out, my bureau chief even agreed to let me use the camper, in exchange for _Geographic_ having first right of refusal for any photos I might take during my sabbatical. He knew perfectly well I would not stop taking pictures no matter what else I might be doing.

I intended to continue my tour of the U. S. without Melissa, but I decided to make a personal detour first. The time had finally come to face my past.

Maybelle decided that would be a good place to stop for the day. She had errands to run and she needed to stretch. She put away her computer, gathered up her laundry and headed into town, stopping to ask Felicia if she needed anything from the store. Felicia shook her head, saying she had done her grocery shopping in the morning.

At the laundromat, Maybelle put her clothes in the washer and sat back to read a book. After her washing was finished, she drove to WalMart for groceries and toiletries. She wanted to have everything she needed ready for her up-coming trip to Arkansas.

She stopped in the diner for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. Typically she didn't eat sweets, but she had discovered Miss Patty's sweet potato pie, and decided to make an exception for that. She used the excuse that sweet potatoes were good for her (ignoring the effects of all that sugar and butter). She had eaten at least one meal at Miss Patty's every day when she was staying at the motel while looking for an apartment. She thought she should continue to stop by occasionally to visit, even though she was eating most of her meals at Felicia's.

Miss Patty and the whole gang of regulars greeted her when she walked in the door. Everyone told her they were glad she had decided to stick around, but they expected her to stop in and visit at least every so often. She promised to do so. Miss Patty grinned, "I've eaten Felicia's cooking. You need to come by here occasionally and get some decent eats."

Maybelle laughed, "You know my palate's not nearly that sophisticated. I happen to like Felicia's cooking."

Miss Patty said, "Yeah, but we like your company, too." She winked and added, "Please, don't be a stranger."

Maybelle patted her hand and said, "You keep makin' this pie, I promise you'll see me pretty regular."

"I make sweet potato pie Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday."

"I'd get fat if I stopped in that often, but I'll be by from time to time, I promise."

One of the men at the counter said, "You'll never get fat with all that hiking in the mountains you been doing."

Maybelle resisted the urge to make a smart remark inquiring as to who was following her around. Miss Patty said, "Word is you take a lotta pictures. You ever show 'em to anybody? Our Kiwanis is always lookin' for speakers. We might like to look at pictures of the mountains, since most of us are too fat and lazy to actually go up there and see the sights for ourselves." She looked at Maybelle with a sheepish expression and said, "You know you're puttin' all the old folks around here to shame."

Maybelle was afraid that she had somehow given offense, and she genuinely said, "I sure didn't mean it that way."

Mr. Parsons said, "We know, Miss Maybelle. You're the most honest and pure-hearted person we know, and even though you haven't been around here long, we pretty much figured out that you are simply doin' what you would do wherever you might be. What's so amazin' is that at your age you can do it at all."

Maybelle laughed, genuinely amused, "Truth is, Mr. Parsons, I'm too old to behave the way I do, and I know I need to slow down. I just don't know how."

"How old are you, if you don't mind my askin'?"

The women in the restaurant looked aghast at the idea that a man would ask an unrelated (elderly) woman her age. Maybelle replied immediately, and with no rancor, "I'm 75. And before you have time to think it, I'll say it: I'm too damned old to be traipsing through the woods takin' pictures. That's a fact, but I been doing craziness like that for decades and I don't know any other way to live. I reckon I'll end up fallin' off a cliff or breakin' a hip on some trail somewheres."

He asked, "Where have you hiked to take pictures before you came here?"

She thought about it for a long time before she answered. She didn't know if she wanted to tell these people her personal business, but they were kind and generous, and they seemed genuinely willing to accept her into their community. She had never been a part of a community before, but she knew enough to know that it would require her to be as open and honest with them as they were with her.

She took a deep breath and said, "Before I retired, I was a photographer for the _National Geographic_ and since I retired I've been free-lancing. I've taken pictures on every continent except Antarctica. They offered to send me there a coupla times, but I turned it down. I don't like the cold, and Antarctica is seriously cold."

Miss Patty said, "Oh, then you have to come to speak at a Kiwanis meeting. You must have such stories to tell!"

Maybelle said, "I'm not much for tellin' stories, but I sure got a lotta pictures if anybody's interested in seeing them."

She drove home and went for a walk in the mountains for a while. As she returned, she saw Felicia in the yard weeding the garden. Maybelle stopped, "Miss Felicia, I want to tell you something. I told some folks at Miss Patty's something about myself today that you don't know, but might find interesting. I want you to hear it from me instead of hearin' it from the grapevine. As you've figured out already, I don't like to talk about myself much. I reckon that if I'm gonna live here I need to be a little more forthcoming, but it's hard for me. Anyway, I told them that I used to be a photographer for the _National Geographic_."

Felicia stood up and wiped her hands on her shirt, "Thank you for telling me. Fact is, I already heard that from three people. Word travels fast around here. Especially amazing news like that. I do appreciate you telling me directly. I was very put out that others heard that story first."

"I'm sorry. I guess my people skills aren't very good."

"You'll soon learn how things work around here." Felicia took off her hat and wiped her brow, "You ready for supper?"

"Yes, I think I am." Maybelle looked at her watch. It was almost 6:00 PM. "You didn't need to wait for me!"

"I didn't mean to. I lost track of time in the garden." She laughed and wiped the sweat from her face, "See, you're not the only one who gets wrapped up in something and loses all track of the time!"

"I'll go wash up and meet you in ten minutes."

Felicia looked at her filthy hands and arms and said, "Would you mind making it half an hour? I'd kind of like to take a shower before we eat."

"Call me when you're ready."

While they ate, Felicia was obviously expecting more details from Maybelle, but they were not forthcoming. Maybelle was very freaked out by what she had shared already. She was venturing into frightening territory for her.

They ate, cleaned up the dishes and then Maybelle went home immediately. When she got home, she went straight to bed, partly in order not to think about the doors she was opening in her life but even more to put off writing the next chapter of her story.

## Chapter 8

Because she had gone to bed so early, she woke well before her usual 5:00 AM. The first time she awoke, it was only three o'clock. She dozed off and on, but could not go back to sleep. Finally she gave up and got out of bed at 4:15 AM, made coffee and settled in her special place with her computer in her lap. The events she was going to write about next demanded that she feel totally safe. This phase of her project would also require a lot of coffee. She poured a large cup, and typed furiously. She had bottled up the story for a very long time, and it gushed out in a torrent once she gave it a chance. Her fingers could barely keep up.

When I left Arkansas at 18, I swore I would never return, but thirty-some odd years later I decided to rethink that decision. I had ignored my most painful memories for a long time, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Even at that time, I knew enough about pop psychology to know that getting some closure on my early life would be good for me.

I headed east on Interstate 70.

As I was driving across eastern Colorado, I had an overwhelming urge to try to find my brothers and sisters. Almost everyone else I knew had a family, even Melissa had adopted (or been adopted by) her husband's family in Ireland. I had friends and kind of a "collected" family of sorts all over the world, but they all had their own kin and homes and roots. I wanted to reconnect with mine as well.

I had rarely let myself think about my siblings in the years since I'd left Little Rock. Usually, whenever a thought of them bubbled up, I'd immediately get busy doing something else, launch a new project, or – sometimes – talk whoever I was traveling with into going out and doing something crazy.

I was not the biggest hell-raiser among the photojournalist community by a long shot, but I could hold my own. Occasionally, when my buried past threatened to overwhelm me, I went on a tear. Nick named it my "Demon" early on during our partnership, and I called it that forever after. When the Demon was running amok, I turned into a madwoman. I worked longer and harder and took more risks getting shots than anybody else I knew, except maybe Tim, who would do anything to get a great shot. When I could work no longer or I had finished a project, I drank, fought and caroused just as hard as I worked. That had not been a terribly good way for a young woman to live. It would have been positively pathetic if I had continued that life-style into middle age.

As I drew nearer to Arkansas, it became impossible to continue to ignore the pain that still festered in my soul over the loss of my family. At one point, it was so bad I had to pull over into a rest area where I sobbed for more than an hour. Fortunately, there was nobody else around to see me make such a scene. It seemed to me that everybody else in the world was at home with their families having Christmas dinner. I know that isn't true, but driving across America on Christmas Day, when even the fast food joints are closed, one could easily jump to that conclusion.

It seems to me that people who are alone in America hide out on holidays, perhaps out of shame at being alone during a time when people are "supposed" to be with others. I was fed up with it, but had never been ashamed of being alone, so I felt free to venture out by myself. That was a mistake. That day I felt as though I was the only person in the world who was alone.

I stopped for the night in Wichita, Kansas, and finished my cry in the shower at a crummy motel which was the only thing I could find open. Before I checked out the next morning, I had decided to do whatever I had to do, no matter how much it might cost or how long it might take, to find my kin. I had no idea how I might go about that, but I knew I had to try.

That made me feel better. I had made a decision even if I didn't exactly know how I was going to execute it. I had finally yielded to the need to mourn the losses that I had refused to acknowledge for decades, and I had a plan. I am never happy unless I have a plan of some sort. A plan always allows me to pretend that I have some kind of control over what might happen next. I know that isn't true, but I am relentless about carrying out my plans, so I sometimes even manage to force things to come out my way.

The next day I arrived in Little Rock about midday. It was the day after Christmas and many businesses were still closed. I spent the day exploring the almost deserted downtown. It bore almost no resemblance to the city I remembered. The diner where I had met the Navy recruiter was gone. I couldn't remember where the recruiter's office had been, but it was probably gone, too. The orphanage was gone as well. I looked it up in the phone book. It had moved to a place in the country. I thought that was probably good for the kids. Little Rock had grown into a thriving, modern city in the thirty-plus years I had been away. It was hard to get my head around that.

I considered driving out to my home town, and then decided against it. I had lost my siblings in Little Rock, and that's where I would start looking for them. The innocence I had lost in the hills wasn't recoverable and I had no interest in revisiting those particular painful memories.

The following day, I went to the library archives and started looking through old newspapers on microfiche. [Note to Gen Y: Consider it a kind of Neanderthal version of scanning.]

I knew that my father's arrest would have made the paper. I found my mother's obituary and then moved forward day by day until I found the article I was looking for. According to the article, Papa plead guilty to the charges of disturbing the peace and reckless endangerment. He was sentenced to four years in state prison. Reckless endangerment? I wondered what the hell that meant. It seemed to me that hitting somebody with a belt, kicking them, and then wielding a chair over your head and threatening to brain them with it constituted battery or, maybe even attempted murder. I was shocked and, somehow, hurt all over again. Frankly, I could sit right here now all these years later and become furious over the injustice of it. I don't have the energy for that right now, so I'll move on.

When he got out of prison, Papa evidently went back home and picked up his life where he'd left off. Nobody by the name of Dickens appeared in the newspaper again until he died at home in 1975. He was buried next to Mama in the family cemetery.

The obituary in the newspaper said his sons, Franklin and Dwight, were at his side when he died. It occurred to me for the first time that finding them might not be so hard. Country people tended not to venture too far from home. If Dwight and Frankie were in the area as late as 1975, they might still be nearby. I went upstairs to the reference desk and looked in a several phone books from towns near my home town. Almost immediately, I found a listing for Dwight Dickens in the Branson directory. I wrote down the number.

The only phone in the library was a pay phone in the hall outside of the bathrooms. That was one call I did not want to make from a public phone, so I packed it in for the day and went back to my motel. I didn't even take off my coat. I sat down on the edge of the bed and, before I could chicken out, I dialed the number. A young girl answered the phone.

I managed to croak, "Hello, is Dwight Dickens at home?"

"Yes, ma'am. Can I tell him who's calling?"

"Tell him it's May."

She dropped the receiver, evidently letting it hang by the cord. I heard it bang into what was probably the leg of the telephone stand. She yelled, "Hey, Daddy, some lady name of May is on the phone for you."

Next, I heard a crash as though something dropped on the floor followed by somebody running and then my heart all but stopped when I heard a raspy voice almost shouting, "Oh, my God, May, is that you?"

"Yes." We both choked up and cried for a while and finally he managed to ask me where I was. I told him. He said I was about four hours from his house and he offered to come after me. I told him I could find the way if he would give me directions.

Before we could get into details like directions, I asked him if he knew what happened to the others. He said, "Well, Frankie got killed two years ago in a car wreck. His wife and kids live in our old house. Frankie took over the farm when Pa died. I reckon you don't know about that.

"Anyways, Frankie's family is at the farm. I'm here; I work in Branson, playing piano in one of the lounges. Charlene lives... actually, come to think of it, Charlene lives very close to where you are. She's married and has a bunch of kids; just had a new baby on Christmas Eve, actually. She came home from the hospital this morning. David's in the Navy, stationed in Hawaii. He's married and has a coupla kids. His family lives in California, near Miramar."

He paused, cleared his throat, and added hoarsely, "We never were able to find out what happened to Lucy."

Then he said, "You stay put. Charlie would have my hide if you were so close to her and I have you come here first. I'll be there by six p. m. Then we'll go see Charlie together."

I hung up, lay down on my bed and sobbed out loud for fifteen minutes. Then, having had quite enough of crying, and knowing there would be more tears to shed later, I pulled myself together took a quick shower and changed my clothes. After that I went for a long walk despite the cold in order to put down my nerves and give me something to do. Eventually, I went back to the motel and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in a very uncomfortable chair, watching the clock until time for Dwight to arrive.

Sooner than I expected, I heard a car pull into the parking lot and screech a stop. I ran outside. Dwight didn't even close the car door. He jumped out from behind the wheel, swung me around and almost suffocated me with his hugs. When we managed to quit that foolishness, Dwight introduced me to his wife, Marsha, and their two kids, Emily and Jake. Marsha got in the back seat with the kids and offered to let me sit up front with Dwight.

He backed out of the parking space and we headed up the road towards Charlene's house. Dwight never let go of my hand the whole way. I think we were both kind of afraid the other one would disappear. In only a few minutes, he pulled into the driveway of a large red-brick ranch house that I had actually passed on my walk earlier in the day.

Before Dwight had time to cut the motor off, the front door flew open and my sister came running out. We managed somehow to get my car door open, and then there was another round of tearful hugging and kissing and incoherent jabbering. After a few minutes Jake commented that it might be warmer if we went inside.

We went into the house where Charlene introduced me to her husband, Ray, a Baptist preacher, and their three children. She disappeared into the bedroom and came out a minute later with a pink bundle in her arms. She looked at me with tears in her eyes as she held the baby out to me. "This was our Christmas blessing this year. Her name is May."

Another crying jag ensued after that announcement. I spent the day sitting in a rocking chair, holding my namesake and feeling overwhelmed. I had spent more than thirty years on my own, missing my family. Now that I'd found them, I was not sure what to do with the torrent of emotions that I was experiencing. It was almost all I could do not to run away, which is what I usually do when I feel highly emotional about something. I had not been in close proximity to children since the orphanage, and the noise and all the bustling around freaked me out. I didn't know how to talk to children, or how to change a diaper or how to give baby a bottle. Fortunately I'm a quick learner, and I was very motivated to make up for lost time.

Somebody asked what time it was in Hawaii and wondered aloud if it would be okay to call David. Dwight said, "I don't give a damn if it's the middle of the night. May comin' home is worth wakin' up for. Get him on the phone."

Charlene, Marsha and Charlene's husband all gave Dwight a dirty look. I figured it was because of the swear word. I made a mental note to watch my language around these folks. Twenty years in the Navy and another decade of traveling around with photographers and reporters made for a vocabulary that was not likely to go over well in a Baptist preacher's home. I knew would have to mind my language. I had no clue how to do that, but I was determined to try.

My life-style has been a kind of an obstacle to my relationship with Ray since the beginning. I've always had the impression that Ray really wants to like me, but every time he starts to soften towards me, I go and do something to offend him. I don't mean to. It's just me being me. I hate that it offends people, but I can't change the person I am. I made the commitment to watch my language around the family but beyond that I figure they sort of have to take me as I am. I think Ray's motivated by the fact that Charlene has always made it clear that she loves me, despite my general heathenism and lack of morals, and she expects him to respect that. That's been kind of hard for Ray, but I give him a lot of credit for trying to tolerate me despite all my wicked ways.

I talked to David on the phone. I had no idea what time it was where he was, but by they time they put me on the phone with him, he was wide awake. He said he was going to be on leave in California starting the first of February. I promised to pay his family a visit while he was on leave.

The next couple of weeks went by in a kind of fast-forward blur. I met Frankie's family, and totally fell in love with his widow and kids. They invited me to stay with them, but there was no way I could stay in that house. In fact, it was clear to all of us that I was very uncomfortable just visiting the family homestead. Even though they had remodeled and enlarged it and the furniture and fixtures were all new and different, merely walking into the kitchen was such a gut-wrenching experience for me, I went into the bathroom and threw up. We didn't stay long.

We never discussed it, but after that one visit, no one ever suggested I should return to the homestead. I always do my visiting with Shelley and the kids at Dwight's house or in other places. I appreciated the fact that everybody seemed to understand my reluctance to spend time in what we call Shelley's house, but what I still think of as Papa's house.

I stayed in the motel and visited as much as I could with Charlene and Dwight. Charlene was hurt when I declined her invitation to stay at her house, but when I explained that I'd been living alone my whole life and I was worried about how I'd fare under the same roof with so many little kids and a preacher, she laughed and said she understood. I'm not sure she really did, but it was nice of her to pretend.

At one point I asked Charlene how come she and David didn't go to Papa's funeral. She told me that Frankie and Dwight had gone back home after they each got out of the orphanage. Interestingly, Papa never made any effort to get Charlene and David out of the orphanage after he got out of prison. Maybe they wouldn't let him have them what with him having spent time in jail. I don't know, but you'd think he'd have at least tried to get his kids back.

Charlene told me she met Ray when she was in high school while still living at the orphanage and she stayed in Little Rock with his family after she turned 18 and got put out of the home. She and Ray got married right after their high school graduation and he went on to the seminary.

Ray's family helped to get David out of the orphanage even before he turned 18 and he lived with Charlene and Ray while he finished high school. She said she kept in touch with Frankie and Dwight but never had any real desire to go back to the hills, and certainly had no interest in trying to reconnect with Papa. I understood that.

Maybe Dwight and Frankie did the mature thing. It may make me a small person, but I know sure as hell I would not have ever tried to resume any kind of relationship with Papa. It was probably different for the older boys. They had worked with him in the fields and had an actual relationship with him before we went to the orphanage. Neither Charlene, David or I had any real connection to him, so turning our backs forever on that part of our lives was probably easier for us than it would have been for Frankie and Dwight.

Seems to me that Papa felt the same way or he'd have tried to get the rest of his kids back after he got out of jail. I realize that could just be sour grapes on my part. I try not to feel bitter. Problem is, on the rare occasions I let myself think about Papa, all I can feel is a kind of bitter sadness. Somehow I can still taste that vile combination of blood and vomit in my mouth. It's not healthy to dwell on it, so I think about it as little as possible.

After David finished high school, he didn't want to live with Charlene and Ray, because Ray was on him to go to college. Given the choice between going back to the homestead and lighting out on his own, he elected the latter. Interestingly, he ended up in the Navy like I did. I reckon the service is a good place for kids who don't know what they want to do with their lives but don't want to (or can't afford to) go to college.

I was delighted to discover that my brothers and sisters were all happy and apparently well adjusted people. From what I heard, even Frankie had been very happy in his marriage before his untimely death. I felt like an odd duck in their midst; I know they felt the same way about me, but they were very nice about it.

After the first of the year, I called a private investigator in Little Rock and asked what he thought the prospects were for finding Lucy. He said he thought he could do it. I paid him a retainer and told him to find her, but not to contact her.

A couple of weeks later, the investigator dropped off a message at the motel front desk asking me to come to his office as soon as possible. I stopped by the next day. He had found Lucy already. She had been adopted by a prominent doctor and his wife, and had grown up in a posh part of Little Rock. After high school she went to college at Tulane and now lived in New Orleans where she was an up-and-coming chef in one of the trendy restaurants in the French Quarter.

I debated for a long time about what to do with that information. The way forward was full of potholes and I was almost sure I was about to fall into one or more of them.

Lucy had been less than two years old when we were taken to the orphanage. Her new family adopted her almost immediately. I doubted she even remembered us. It was possible she didn't even know she was adopted. I didn't want to cause a crisis in her life, but I had an overwhelming need to see her.

I pondered what to do for several days. Finally, I did the thing that seemed to be the most honest and direct thing. I sat down and wrote her parents a letter. I kept a draft of it. It said:

Dear Dr. and Mrs. Pennington,

I am afraid that you will not appreciate hearing from me, but it is important to me to at least reach out to you. I don't want to create a problem for you, and especially not for your daughter, but I want to see if there is a way for me to get what I desperately need without causing your lives to be disrupted too much.

I am Lucy's oldest sister. (Thank you for not changing her name.) We were taken away from our family when she was 18 months old. I was sixteen at the time. Between me and Lucy, there were three boys and a girl. You adopted Lucy soon after we arrived at the orphanage. The rest of us were split up and none of us other than Lucy was adopted because we were all too old.

When I turned 18, I had to leave the orphanage and they wouldn't let me take my remaining brothers and sister. They told me I should assume they'd all been adopted. That was a lie, and I still don't know why they told me that.

I had no place to go and no other plans, so I joined the Navy and have not been back to Arkansas in more than 30 years. When I came back recently, by a miracle I can almost not even talk about without crying, I managed to reconnect with Dwight, David and Charlene along with Frankie's family (Frankie died a few years ago). Anyway, they're all grown and with kids of their own. We're trying to get reacquainted after so many years.

The only missing piece in our family (besides Frankie) is Lucy. I'm not saying that we want her to be part of our family as though she never left it. The private investigator I hired to find her tells me Lucy's had a very good life and yours appears to be a very happy family. I don't want to disrupt that or upset the balance of your family.

I'd like to see her, though. Just once. She doesn't even have to know who I am. You can tell her I'm an acquaintance you met somewhere.

I am sorry for being so blunt, but that's the way I am and I can't figure out a more diplomatic way to bring up this subject.

I'm staying at the Holiday Inn on Rosemont. Please call me.

I signed my name and put down the telephone number of the motel and my room number. I mailed the letter and didn't leave the hotel room for several days. I told my family I had a bad cold and didn't want to give it to anybody else. Fact is, I was scared to death I'd miss the phone call.

Three days later, I got the call. Mrs. Pennington invited me to come for coffee. I asked when she had in mind and she asked when it would be convenient. I told her I could be there in half an hour. She said she'd be waiting.

I'm guessing that their neighborhood had never seen such a beat up old pickup as the one I was driving. I'm sure she took one look at that truck out the window and figured that Lucy's family was a bunch of hillbillies, which, to be honest, it was. Amazingly, Mrs. P opened the door anyway.

Doc Pennington was home, too. The three of us sat in the living room with coffee that we stirred around but none of us drank. I guess we knew we were keyed up enough without adding extra caffeine.

Doc Pennington didn't beat around the bush. He said, "Miss Dickens, I think you understood when you wrote your letter what a bombshell it would be. I can't tell you how much my wife and I appreciate the fact that you contacted us instead of reaching out directly to Lucy.

"First, I want to tell you that we are more than happy to try to facilitate a meeting between your family and our daughter. We think that it will be difficult for everybody, but we believe it may ultimately be a good and healing thing for all of you, maybe especially Lucy.

"You should understand that Lucy does not remember the people she calls her First Family at least not consciously. She knows she was adopted. She has a few memories of her life before, some of which have caused her and us a great deal of anguish.

"You see, Lucy suffered with nightmares nearly every night of her childhood: screaming, kicking, scratching night terrors. We took her to several child therapists, all of whom thought that she had experienced a trauma at a very early age. We have all come to believe she experienced something horrible and it stayed with her, at least subconsciously. One therapist wanted to use hypnosis to send her back to recall it, but Lucy was afraid and refused to cooperate.

"Eventually, the nightmares subsided and she says she doesn't have them very often any more. She does have crushing abandonment issues for which she has been in therapy most of her life.

"We think that getting to know your family may help her.

"Do you by chance know what it is she went through that has tormented her so? I'd like to know so I can ask her therapist what to tell her."

I nodded, and put my head in my hands, sobbing and making no effort to wipe away the tears. Mrs. Pennington was crying, too. She moved to sit next to me on the sofa, handed me a tissue and put her arm around me. Such a wonderful woman she is! I love her as though she were my mother, even though she is only ten years older than me.

I told them about Mama's sudden death and Papa's meltdown with him beating me and all of us running away to the police. That is the only time I have ever told that story out loud, and I haven't even allowed myself to think through it again until I started writing this memoir.

By the time I finished talking, all three of us were sobbing aloud. None of us did anything to hide or stop the tears. The subject matter merited tears, and we all knew it. Doc said he would talk to Lucy's therapist and then he and his wife would tell Lucy about our meeting and let her decide whether or not she wanted to meet me and/or the rest of her First Family.

I agreed to that and suggested that if she did want to see us, maybe it should be in some neutral place not their house and not any of our places. I suggested maybe we could meet at Ray's church. They said they would leave the location up to Lucy as well, but they appreciated the suggestion.

I reckoned at that point, the interview was over, so I stood up to go. I saw Doc and Mrs. P exchange a long, strange look. She still had tears in her eyes, but she nodded to him. He said, "Before you go, we want you to see something."

He led me up the stairs and down the hall to a closed door. Mrs. P was behind me, sniffling. He said, "We want you to see Lucy's bedroom."

Mrs. P looked sheepish and added, "She's grown now and lives on her own, but we haven't changed her room."

Doc opened the door and I thought I was going to pass out. On all four walls of Lucy's room there were framed prints of photos I had taken. I stood there looking at every _National Geographic_ cover that featured one of my photos, plus several other shots that didn't make the cover, but were among my particular favorites. I put my hands over my mouth and stood in the doorway. I couldn't speak or cry or do anything but wonder how it was that she had my photos in her room.

Doc said, "There was one pleasant thing she remembered about her past. She remembered your name. We subscribed to the _National Geographic_ and we encouraged her to look at the pictures even before she could read. We taught her to read maps from the inserts and on occasion we visited places described in _Geographic_ articles Lucy particularly liked.

"At one point she was assigned to write a term paper on Japan for a high school social studies project. She was doing research, sitting on the floor looking at the _National Geographic_ when she started to cry. I asked her what was wrong, thinking she read a story that touched her heart, which was not an uncommon thing with her. She's very tender-hearted.

"She pointed to a picture of a woman and a child walking down a road in rural Japan, and pointed at the photo byline. 'It says Maybelle Dickens. I know her.'

"I asked her how she knew a photographer from the _National Geographic_. She said, 'She's either my sister or my First Mother. I remember the woman who took care of me. Her name was Maybelle. I think this is her.'

"I could not believe that there could be anything to Lucy's hypothesis, but I offered to contact the _National Geographic_ to find out. Lucy asked me not to. She said she wanted to believe it even if it weren't true." He grinned, "She simply decided that the woman who took those pictures was her kin, and that was that. She did not want to be bothered with any actual facts. I thought that was somewhat unhealthy, but Lucy insisted, and she's one stubborn gal, that one. It seemed to give her comfort, though, so we went along with it."

I grinned at him through my tears, and said, "It's in her genes."

Mrs. P looked around the room and asked tentatively, "You took these pictures, didn't you, Miss Dickens?"

I nodded and croaked, "Those are every one of my covers, plus some of my favorite photos that never made the cover."

Mrs. P took my hand and said, "I'm almost one hundred percent sure Lucy will want to see you as soon as we can arrange it."

I asked, "How and when will you tell her?"

She said, "Luce wasn't able to come home for the Holidays because, as you can imagine, that's a busy time in the restaurant business. She's coming home for a long weekend next week. We'll tell her then. Will you still be here?"

I smiled and said, "I've waited thirty years, I can wait two more weeks. I'm supposed to go to California to meet David's family, but I can put that off."

Doc said, "Maybe David's family would consider coming here on his leave. You could have a family reunion."

Mrs. P said, "I'd be happy to host it at our house if Lucy's agreeable."

I grinned and said, "Let me see, there's Frankie's widow and two kids; Dwight and Marsha have two, also; Charlene and her husband have four; David and his wife have two. That's quite a lot of people you don't even know to be entertaining in your house!"

Doc asked, "What about you?"

I made a face and shook my head. I waved my hand pointing at the pictures on the walls, "I never had time to get married. I had the wanderlust, dontcha know. I guess in a way my pictures are my kids, and I have thousands of 'em!"

I returned to the hotel, and went straight to bed, too overwhelmed to do anything other than retreat into unconsciousness.

I didn't tell the others what I had learned because I didn't want them to be disappointed if Lucy said she didn't want to meet us. I did call David to ask if he'd be willing to come to Little Rock for a reunion instead of having me drive to California. I made up some story about how I'd like us to all be together and have pictures of the whole family all at one time.

He agreed immediately, saying he was not thrilled about the idea of me trying to drive across the Rockies in the dead of winter by myself. What was more, he was pretty sure his wife would agree to my suggestion because she was from Little Rock, too, and she hated California. He said she generally jumped at any excuse to go home and visit her own family.

The following weekend Mrs. P called and said that Lucy not only wanted to meet the family, she was positively eager to do so. Lucy wanted to meet with me, alone, first. I was thrilled by that prospect, and terrified at the same time.

Mrs. P asked me if I could come over right away. I told her I'd set a speed record. And I did.

I was still driving the pickup camper, but Doc and Mrs. P never said one word about how hideous it was. Recently I told Mrs. P about buying my first new car and she told me she hoped it was better than that beat-up old rattle trap I drove when we first met. We laughed about that for a long time.

When I got out of the car in front of the Pennington's' house, Lucy flew into my arms. We cried and kissed and hugged for a very long time. Her parents were kind enough to leave us alone. We went to her room and talked for hours. She told me about her whole life, which had been wonderful in every respect except for the nightmares and phobia about being left behind, which caused her to have problems in her relationships with other people, and in particular with men.

I told her a kind of sanitized version of my life story, and ended by saying that I hoped she would find someone to love her and have kids, but if she didn't I said I thought having a career you're passionate about is the next best thing to marriage and children. I meant that at the time. I'm not sure I agree with myself now, but a lot has happened in my life since then.

We kind of came to the conclusion that cooking and entertaining filled the same void in Lucy's spirit that traveling and taking pictures filled in mine.

That afternoon was magical and wonderful for both of us.

The next day, David's family arrived from California. Charlene offered to host a dinner for the entire clan at her house. I told Lucy and her parents about it. I told them it would probably be very overwhelming with the entire clan gathered together, but I invited them to come if they wanted to.

Doc and Mrs. P begged off. They said they'd like to meet all of us, and their offer to host a party at their house still stood. They wanted Lucy to have a chance to be with us alone, without having to worry about their reaction. They offered to drop her off and then pick her up later. They didn't want her to have to drive because they knew it would be an emotional experience for her.

Did I mention that Doc and Mrs. P were maybe the most loving, kind and generous people I've ever met? Everybody else who has known them thinks the same, I believe.

The Dickens clan gathered at Charlene's at four o'clock that Saturday afternoon. We planned to have supper around six. Before supper, the family wanted me to spend some time telling them about my travels. I had ordered a selection of my prints from storage to share with them.

I asked the Pennington's to drop Lucy off about five.

We all sat around the big living room. There were kids of all ages sprawled all over the floor. Adults sat on couches chairs and ottomans around the perimeter of the room. I sat in Ray's chair, which I now know was something of an honor, although I didn't realize it at the time.

I was kind of running out of gas with my stories and there was a lull in the conversation at one point. I heard a car door slam, and went to open the front door before Lucy knocked. I led her into the living room, holding her hand, and announced, "Since all the rest of us are here, I hope you don't mind I invited Lucy to join us."

The place erupted. I think we scared the hell out of the kids and in-laws because they all disappeared. Soon it was just the five of us in the room, laughing and crying and acting like damned fools.

Eventually we calmed down enough for the others to venture back into the room. We made introductions all the way around and then we sat down to dinner, the first time we had done so in nearly 35 years. It felt like Frankie was with us, too, mainly because his son, Frank, Jr., was a total dead ringer for his father at that age, which was when I had seen him last. It was so eerie, I had a hard time looking directly at him until he got older and his looks changed a little.

It was a glorious occasion. Later in the evening, Doc and Mrs. P arrived to pick up Lucy. She asked them to come in and they joined our family. Literally. Ever since then, the entire Pennington family has been part of ours, not just Lucy but her parents, too. Mrs. P adopted all the rest of us, kids and grandkids alike, and she's still everybody's Granny. When Doc P died a few years ago, every member of my family, in all three living generations, was there. The Penningtons were never church-goers, but Mrs. P asked Ray to read the committal.

I turned 50 in 1984, and for the first time in 30 years, by early 1985, I had a family. It was wonderful.

Despite the fact that I loved reconnecting with my kin, I soon felt the need to get back to work. I missed traveling and taking pictures. Mostly, I needed some time to myself. I was unlikely to find any solitude among that clan!

I called my bureau chief and told him I was ready for a new assignment.

My family was not happy about that. We didn't argue or anything, but I am pretty sure that they expected me to stay in Little Rock and assume the role of family matriarch. What they didn't understand was that my gypsy lifestyle wasn't just about me running away from the loss of my family or trying to keep myself busy to avoid dealing with painful feelings. It is part of who I am. I think the thing that motivated me to go to school in the first place was some deep need to explore the world beyond my own backyard. I think I was born with the wanderlust.

I wasn't going to hang up my cameras and quit gallivanting around the globe just because I had a family. Most of my colleagues had families, families they visited on occasion (usually about once every year or two), families who got left behind when the next assignment to God-knows-where happened to come along. There are just some people who can't stand to stay in one place for long. I'm one of them. People like me are kind of like the bear that always has to climb the next mountain, just because it's there.

I am sorry if there were hurt feelings about that, but I had been hanging around in one spot for a couple of months, and I needed to go back to work. That meant I had to leave Little Rock.

Maybelle wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeves for the upteenth time that day and put the computer on the floor by her chair, staring off at the mountains. When Felicia had called to say that dinner was ready, Maybelle told her she wasn't hungry. She made a lunch meat sandwich and put the computer away. After that she read for a while, watched the sunset – which was kind of a dud because it was cloudy and foggy – and then went to bed.

## Chapter 9

The next morning Maybelle got up early, ate a big breakfast after realizing she had barely eaten at all the day before. She caught up on emails and checked the headlines and the weather. Since she hadn't left the house the day before, she needed a good long walk in the mountains, but it was still dark so she decided to work on her story for a little while first.

In response to my call, my chief invited me to Washington for some meetings to discuss my next assignment. I had never been to the _Geographic_ headquarters. I think that's the main reason they invited me: I had never met most of the people I worked for. In fact, I had reported to my boss for more than six years after the previous bureau chief retired, and I'd never met the guy in person. I was one of the most senior photographers at the _National Geographic_ but most of the people at HQ had never met me. For my part, I was completely okay with that. Evidently the editorial staff was not.

I wasn't the only photographer who steered clear of HQ. Photographers seem to be sort of the modern world's equivalent of cowboys or mountain men, living on the outskirts of civilization, visiting populated areas only when absolutely necessary. I always fell into that category. (I still do, to be honest.)

Anyway, I had no valid excuse not to accept the "invitation" (which was more of a summons anyway) so I sold the pickup camper to Dwight's family and flew to D. C. where I sat through a bunch of miserable meetings with big shots. The only good thing about that trip was that the cherry trees were blooming, and I wandered around the city taking pictures like a tourist, only I had a lot better cameras and more photographic experience than most tourists. My photo spread of Washington in bloom was a feature article in the magazine later that year, and it won all kinds of awards. That was the first time my photographs won any prizes. I kind of liked that.

After I left D. C., I rambled around the United States for a few more months, traveling mostly by train. Then I went to Canada. I rented a camper in Seattle and drove up the Al-Can Highway and visited remote places in northern Canada. The Canadian Rockies were amazing. I loved the Canadian people, too. Canada was kind of like the United States, only the people had that lovely, gentle accent and they weren't as loud. As fall approached, I visited Toronto and Quebec. After that I moved on to Newfoundland, where I considered staying for a while except that the locals seemed okay with American tourists who visited and then left. They didn't seem so keen on somebody threatening to stick around.

When winter set in, I headed South of the Border – to Mexico. I had been all over South America, but had avoided Central America, because it seemed as though there was always some kind of war going on there. I ordinarily tried to steer clear of shooting wars. I was not that kind of photographer.

Mexico was one place I'd always wanted to explore, mainly because of the amazing colors I'd seen in the photos taken by others. I ended up staying in Mexico for a couple of years. At first I traveled with a young writer who was doing a feature on the various cultures of Mexico. We had a lot of fun.

He was about 25, and I was old enough to be his mother, but we became friends immediately. We traveled from one end of Mexico to the other, interviewing people and taking pictures all day long, and then sitting up at night drinking beer and tequila and swapping stories. His mother was dead and his father was a bum. He was rootless and had no other family. I had literally been there and done that, so I sort of added him to my collection of adopted kin. Tom's been part of my family ever since. His kids even call me Granny.

After Tom finished his field research, he went back to Mexico City to write his article. My chief asked me if I'd be willing to try doing some nature photography. I'd always done exclusively photos of scenery. Nature photography involved a lot of close-up work. I said I'd be willing to try it.

Thereupon, I went to Yucatan and spent the next six months taking pictures of bugs. After the first couple of days, I was ready to call D. C. and ask them to get me the hell out of there, but after the scientist I was working with explained about the life cycle, behavior and environmental importance of the particular bugs in question, I actually got interested in the project.

I had to learn on the job about close-up, high-resolution scientific photography, but I soon discovered I totally loved it. That was when my ability to sit still in one (often uncomfortable) position for long periods of time started to come in handy. The pictures I took during the first few weeks weren't very good, but I bought some new lenses and made some very expensive international phone calls to scientific photographers I'd worked with on the Cousteau team. Between the lenses, the expert advice and a lot of trial-and-error, I soon got the hang of it. The article was deadly dull in my opinion, but the photos were good enough to get me invited to work on more projects of that kind.

When we were finished with that article, I asked for another similar assignment, so they sent me to some jungle in Costa Rica where a group of scientists were studying birds. Given my passion for color, it was somewhat surprising to me that it took me nearly 35 years of taking pictures as an amateur and professional to discover the amazing world of birds in the rain forest! I figured it was better late than never, and I threw myself into the project with the enthusiasm of a twenty year old.

I climbed trees and sat for hours, snapping pictures of some of the most colorful creatures on the planet. When I climbed down from the trees at night my body reminded me that I wasn't a twenty-year-old anymore. I had to resort to liniment for the first time in my life. I didn't let that stop me from climbing the trees again the next day.

I didn't like the scientists I was working with very much; they were ungodly dull, even for scientists. Therefore, I took to hob-nobbing with the locals. I had picked up some Spanish on my first tour in South America with Nick. Tom spoke fluent Spanish and I learned from him to communicate fairly well.

I started hanging out in the local cantina and making friends with the regulars. I had never done that before because the writers I worked with usually did the talking. Typically, I hung back and said little. That was the first time in my life I sort of got out from behind a writer and started talking to the locals.

I ended up submitting an article of my own about the people in the little town where we were staying. It was a short filler article and a staff writer had to fix it up, but it was totally cool to have not only my photos in the magazine, but also my name on the byline for the article itself. That was a breakthrough for me, because it planted the notion that I could go out on my own and not always be tethered to a writer.

In 1988, I was summoned to D. C. again. I went, reluctantly, and was surprised to find myself in a meeting with several of the _National Geographic_ ' _s_ most senior writers and photographers. Tim Jones was among them. I hadn't seen him in years, but we had followed each others' careers and we greeted each other like the old and dear friends we were.

It turned out that most of the writers and photographers at the meeting knew each other. In fact, most of us had worked together at one time or another. A wave of laughter went around the room at one point when we realized without anyone saying a word that there was probably going to be some serious hell raised by a bunch of old farts that night. (That was exactly what happened, too.)

The reason for the high-level confab was because the _National Geographic_ had a special assignment and they wanted all their top people on it. The editor-in-chief chaired the meeting, which freaked me out. I knew they were going to drop a bombshell. They didn't disappoint.

The editor said, "I know you have all figured out that this is a big deal and before you leave to go get drunk and tear up the town, I have a few things to say.

"First of all, behave yourselves tonight. You're in Washington, D. C., not some remote village where nobody knows anything about the _National Geographic_." We all laughed and everyone in the room, including the chief, knew we would completely ignore his instructions.

He went on, "You know and I know that the _Geographic_ doesn't do hard news. But, we do cover things that cause cultural or environmental changes in our world. Most of you have been off in the jungles and remote places and I don't know how carefully you follow the news in the West. I know for a fact that at least a couple of you have no interest in anything that goes on in the United States or Europe. However, we want you to rethink that, at least temporarily.

"There are things going on in Eastern Europe that are likely to change the future course of Western civilization. We want to cover it. Not from a news standpoint. The newspapers and networks are all over that. We want our folks on the ground taking pictures of the events from a cultural standpoint. We want to cover the impact the events have on the daily lives of the people involved.

"I would like to send any or all of you to Europe. You will have no particular assignment. Find something to do to keep yourselves occupied and to give you an excuse to be there. Hang out with the locals. Make friends. Talk to people. Take pictures of ordinary people doing ordinary things. We think that you will find a lot of ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things. Something potentially big is going to happen, and we want our people to be there."

Tim and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. I saw a couple of others I knew making disgusted-looking faces, too. We were all photographers and reporters who crawled around in the jungle taking pictures of birds and bugs or reporting on the lives of remote tribes of cannibals and crap like that. Not one of us in that room had the least interest in Europe.

That was, of course, precisely the reason we had been selected for the assignment. We would go to Europe knowing little about what was going on there. We knew (and cared) little about the European culture . We would go into the situation cold, with virgin eyes. That's the perfect way for a photographer to approach a story, or a reporter, too, for that matter.

The editor-in-chief told us he wanted us to focus on Germany, Poland, Russia and the Baltic states. One of the reporters asked, "How the hell can we do that. Are you going to get us visas to visit Communist countries?"

Tim said, "By my count, about half of us aren't US citizens. I travel on an Australian passport, and can go almost anywhere."

One of the Americans muttered, "Bastard!" (I swear to God it wasn't me.)

Everybody chuckled, but almost all of us resented and envied the freedom the Australians and South Africans had to go almost anywhere in the world. The editor told us he'd get whatever visas he could for those of us who traveled on American passports.

Tim wanted to go to Poland. He asked me if I would be willing to go as his photographer if I could get a visa. I grinned and said, "Sure!"

He moved closer and whispered, "This is the biggest thing either of us will ever have the chance to witness. It'll be fun to experience it together."

The next day, while nursing one of the worst hangovers I ever had (which is saying something!), Tim and I drank a half gallon or so of coffee and talked for hours. We went to the library and pulled up newspapers, reading amazing stories about the things that had been going on in Poland and Eastern Europe. I am one of those people who barely glances at newspapers other than to check the weather forecast, and I until that time I had never once bothered to read anything about Europe.

In so doing, I had missed the birth of one of the biggest stories on the planet since the end of World War II, but once again my incredible luck came through and I had the opportunity to be in the front row when the seeds that Solidarity had planted in Poland blossomed in amazing glory throughout Eastern Europe.

Maybelle leaned back in her chair, smiling at the memory, but that was then and now she was an old lady who had been sitting too long. She needed a walk. She put away her computer, packed her ditty bag and headed across the fields where she wandered in the mountains for several hours.

She returned just in time for supper.

Felicia seemed unusually quiet and troubled, and the food was not up to her usual standards. Ordinarily, Maybelle was very reluctant to pry into the personal lives of others, but something told her that Felicia needed to talk. While they were cleaning off the table and washing the dishes, Maybelle asked Felicia what was wrong.

Felicia burst into tears. Maybelle put her arms around Felicia and gave her a hug, "We can finish the dishes later. Sit down and tell me what's the matter."

Felicia sat at the table and, while tearing several paper napkins into tiny confetti, told Maybelle about a crisis that had enveloped her family. Her daughter lived in San Francisco where she and her husband ran an art gallery. Evidently Felicia's son-in-law had made some bad business decisions and/or got involved with the wrong people and had lost all their money. Then, to make matters worse, he had fallen into debt to some very persistent creditors. Felicia's daughter believed he might even be in criminal trouble. Her daughter was about to lose not only her marriage, but her house and everything she owned. She was afraid that if she didn't distance herself from her husband immediately she could be implicated in his criminal mischief as well.

Maybelle didn't hesitate, "Tell her to come here. If she needs money for a plane ticket, I've got money. If you don't have room on your side of the house, I'll move out and she can move in on my side. Seems to me, though, that your third floor would make a fabulous apartment for her and her young'un. How old did you say your granddaughter is?"

"Tania is fourteen."

"You still got plenty of furniture up in the attic. We could fix it up for them. I'll help."

Felicia laughed through her tears and looked hopeful for the first time all day, "You don't even know my daughter and granddaughter, why would you put yourself out like that? What's more, Miss Maybelle, I hate to tell you but you're a little long in the tooth to be running up and down stairs and moving furniture like that."

Maybelle thought about that for a while and said, "You're probably right about the second part, but as long as I can keep doin' that kind of stuff, I figure it's good for me. As for the first part...." She paused and said, "Without going into any detail, I'll just say I know a thing or two about losing everything you have and starting over with nothing. If I can help somebody in that situation, I'm glad to do it. Most especially if there's children involved."

Felicia looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and naked gratitude.

"I'll call my daughter tonight."

"Go call her now. I'll finish the dishes and let myself out."

## Chapter 10

Maybelle sat in her favorite chair feeling her usual delicious anticipation as she looked at the mountains while the world seemed to quiet itself for the coming sunset. Sunset was her favorite time of the day. She watched the darkness gobble up the sunlight, and then continued to watch as the light fought back in a million tiny ways. Maybelle was not a big fan of organized religion but she had traveled once with a writer who was a very religious Christian. The woman had talked Maybelle into reading the Bible. Maybelle read the whole thing from "In the beginning" to "Come, Lord Jesus" over a period of a few weeks and she thought it was a really good book, although she never could work out how Jews and Christians got their respective religions out of it. She loved the stories nonetheless.

One of her favorite lines in the whole book was: _The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it._ She thought of that passage every time she watched the stars come out at night. She didn't understand a lot of the metaphysical gobbledy gook about religion, but she understood that light was stronger than darkness. She knew that love could overcome hate and good could overcome evil. The operative word was "could": the outcome was not inevitable. Whenever Maybelle encountered a situation where light actually overcame darkness, love beat back hate or good overcame evil, she paused to acknowledge it and to cheer for the rightness of the outcome. The potential for good was enough for her. Unlike a lot of conventionally religious people she knew, Maybelle did not require certainty.

Her heart ached for Felicia, who was worried about her daughter. She felt even worse for Felicia's granddaughter because she knew from first-hand experience what it was like for a kid whose world implodes because of selfish stupidity on the part of adults. The difference was that Felicia's granddaughter had people to take her in and love her. She would never know the pain and loneliness that Maybelle had felt. Then again, maybe she would experience the pain and loss that Lucy had suffered when she lost one world and entered another one that was technically better but difficult to adjust to nonetheless.

In any case Maybelle felt that, since she was in the position to do so, she should do whatever she could do to help the child. That put her in the mood to think of all the other damaged souls she had adopted over the years. Lucy liked to say that some people pick up stray cats and dogs, but May picked up stray people. To which May always replied, "Well, somebody's gotta do it, dammit."

Maybelle replied to a bunch of emails, and realized that she was going to have to do something about the email traffic. She had so many nieces, nephews, and pseudo-relatives, plus friends and colleagues all over the world, some days it seemed she could spend her whole day answering emails and keeping up on correspondence. She decided to look into the prospect of hosting a blog or website where she could post her pictures and let her kin know what mischief she was up to without having to respond to individual messages.

She sighed, and picked up her computer. She had promised the family she would finish writing her story, and she intended to keep her promise. Besides, she was getting to some of the really good stuff t. The next part would be fun to write about.

By some miracle, _National Geographic_ managed to get me a visa to visit Poland for up to a year. Tim and I told the Polish government we wanted to do a series about Polish agriculture. The Polish government gave us permission to travel without restrictions in the countryside, because generally the _Geographic_ wrote favorable stories, and the Communist countries liked all the good press they could get in the West. Poland, in particular, was eager for good press on almost any subject other than the Solidarity movement.

Tim suggested that we share our hotel rooms. I balked at first, but he insisted, telling me that the first time he went to Russia, his male photographer was abducted and interrogated by the police regarding what they were up to. The first time he went to Yugoslavia, his female photographer was raped in her hotel room. After that, he always shared a room with his photographer (male or female) so they could watch out for each other.

I asked, "And how did the husbands of your female traveling companions take that?"

Tim shrugged, "A couple of women refused the assignment because of what they considered my cheekiness. One woman's husband told her she could only go if she shared a room with me. I traveled with her a lot."

"Wow. That's trust in your wife."

He shook his head, "I think it was trust in both of us. Her husband and I had traveled (illegally) for several months, in western China. We always shared our hotel rooms and it saved our lives a bunch of times. He wanted his wife to be safe."

I said, "Well, I guess it will be okay. After all, neither of us is married right now, and it isn't like we haven't shared a room before, anyway."

Tim made a face and said, "You have a point. To be clear, I'm not suggesting we pick up where we left off."

"Good, because a lot of water has gone under that bridge."

We booked all our rooms together and told people we met on our travels that we were married, but I had not changed my name. We were awkward with each other at first, but we soon realized our friendship had somehow survived the years of our separation and his marriages to other women.

We ended up having a great time together and, as it happened, we soon did pick up where we had left off when we discovered our love was still there under all those layers of time and neglect. I tried not to let him know how much I loved him and he hid his deepest feelings from me, too. It would be hard to say which of us was the bigger idiot.

Very soon our personal feelings for each other were overshadowed by the rising tide of excitement in Poland that peaked in 1988. Everywhere we went, there was talk of freedom, and the air was filled with a heady mix of hope and anticipation. One night we were sitting in a bar in Gdansk listening to the animated conversations whirling around us. Neither of us understood more than a few words of Polish, but we could intuitively understand what everyone was talking about without understanding the words.

Tim leaned over and whispered in my ear, "You know freedom does ring!"

I agreed.

_When Freedom Rings_ became the title of our _National Geographic_ series. Tim later expanded it into the book that catapulted his writing career into the literary stratosphere. But, all that happened later.

I knew that night in Gdansk he was right, and I wondered if that same excitement and anticipation rose up in people before every revolution. I think it probably does. What we found in Poland was a flood tide of enthusiasm and expectation that would inevitably precipitate a crisis. We didn't know what it would be or when the breakthrough would happen, but we could feel in the air that some kind of a climax was coming.

When I asked people if they were afraid, they almost all said no. They were realistic about what they were up against. The Poles were all too familiar with the Soviet manner of handling dissent, but to a person, they insisted that freedom was an important enough goal to risk everything.

That reminded me of the last part of the Declaration of Independence, that says, "... we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." Those dudes risked everything they had or might ever have for freedom. The Polish people were willing to do the same. I suppose Revolution in any country or any generation requires nothing less than total commitment.

We occasionally crossed paths with journalists and other writers who were trolling Eastern Europe looking for stories. We learned that there was a story on every corner, and they were almost all the same. Poland was going to throw off the Soviet headlock and it would be a free and democratic country. As the saying goes, "Failure was not an option."

Neighboring countries caught the democratic fever, too. Some American magazines and newspapers offered to let their reporters choose to go home to avoid getting caught in the middle of a revolution. I only heard of one person who accepted that offer and she was a pregnant _Newsweek_ reporter. The person who told us the story said she cried all the way to the airport, but knew she should not risk her baby's health for the sake of adventure. The rest of us felt really sorry for her.

Every female reporter that I knew who was in child-bearing years did one of two things: she either swore off sex altogether or she doubled up on contraceptive methods. None of them was willing to run the risk of getting pregnant and having to make that same choice. Those of us who were already post-menopausal joked about the fact that sometimes it wasn't such a bad thing to be an old broad.

The anticipation of something amazing continued to grow. Ronald Reagan was praising Solidarity from America, and lobbing verbal grenades at the Evil Empire. Margaret Thatcher was doing the same thing from England. In November 1988, Thatcher visited Poland's president, and in what was perhaps one of the rudest speeches ever given by a head of state during a visit to another country, castigated him for the way he ran his country. [Yes, before anybody gets all worked up: Khrushchev's "We Will Bury You" speech at the UN is right up there, too.] The Poles interpreted that as unconditional support from the West. Some in the Solidarity movement thought that meant that the West would defend Poland if Russia attacked.

Tim's opinion was shared almost universally by the Westerners in Poland: Thatcher and Reagan might use Solidarity as a way to score points with their base by rubbing Gorbachev's nose in it, but they weren't going to lead their countries into a war with Russia to protect a bunch of Pollacks. Some of the reporters tried to warn the Poles they spoke to not to expect any meaningful assistance from the West. Their warnings generally fell on deaf ears. People everywhere know what cynical jerks reporters can be, and most people take our opinions with a grain of salt. In that case, cynical jerks or not, I still believe the reporters were right. Fortunately for the Poles, military intervention from the West proved unnecessary.

I didn't really care very much about the politics of the situation. I have never had much of an interest in politics. I found the whole thing interesting from a personal and emotional standpoint. For me the really interesting story was about people who had been oppressed for a thousand years who were standing up, sticking out their chins and saying, "Enough!"

My photos told _that_ story.

Until then, I had rarely taken photos of people other than those who might happen to be in a landscape picture for the sake of perspective, but I had learned to do close-up scientific photography during my time in Mexico and Honduras. In Africa, I had learned to use telephoto lenses to take closeups of animals from a distance so as not to disturb the subject (or, more accurately, in order not to get too close to a potentially dangerous subject).

I used those skills to take close-up, candid shots of people, who most of the time didn't know there was a photographer anywhere in the area. I made the eyes and the hands of my subjects the focal point of virtually all my pictures from Poland. Some of those pictures still can bring me to tears even after all this time.

I didn't care about the politics, and never really was sure about who all the players were. I was there to take pictures of what was happening. What I thought was happening was people waking up and taking control of their lives. I took very emotional pictures that narrated the events in ways verbal analysis couldn't.

When my visa expired, I rotated back to the US and visited HQ in Washington. My bureau chief's reaction to a series of shots I took of people in a crowd listening to a speech by Lech Walesa surprised me. He spread the pictures out on his desk and said, "Somebody ought to show these pictures to Gorbachev. They'd scare the living bejesus out of that sumbitch."

I asked, "Is that good or bad?"

He looked at me and said, "I have no idea if it's good or bad for the Poles and/or the Ruskies, but these pictures are gonna be fabulous in the magazine! Maybelle, you just keep getting better and better."

I took a side trip to Arkansas where I showed a bunch of my pictures to my family and the Penningtons. They were all amazed. Lucy asked for the original of a photo of a little girl playing with a doll while the rest of the crowd focused on Walesa, looking at him as though he was the Second Coming of Christ. I grinned and said, "That's my favorite out of the whole study, and it's the first one the magazine rejected."

Lucy looked me in the eyes and smiled, "That's because they don't understand it."

I nodded and held the picture for a minute. I hated to part with it because it spoke so strongly to me of the vulnerability of children when the passions of adults are inflamed. "That's right." I hugged her and kissed her cheek, "But you do. And, yes, you can have it."

The _National Geographic_ was unable to get me a visa to go back to Poland after my first one expired. My chief and I screamed, swore, and yelled at every bureaucrat in the State Department and we called in every favor we could think of in any federal department where we thought we might have some leverage. I even contacted some people I knew at the Department of the Navy. It was all to no avail.

Tim's visa had been extended, and he stayed in Poland. I was so pissed off I couldn't sleep for days.

I wanted to get as close as I could to Poland, so I went to Germany. I spent a few months in West Germany in early 1989, but soon came to understand that I needed to go to Berlin. Me and every other freaking damned reporter and photographer on the planet!

I arrived in Berlin in September 1989. I was alone and I spoke no German, but I was a seasoned traveler and evidently all Germans speak at least some English, so I was able to get around with no problems. I was armed with a couple of the finest German cameras I could get my hands on and I had three hundred rolls of 35mm film in my backpack. In order to make room, I had pared down my already sparse wardrobe to three pairs of underwear, two bras, two pairs of khaki pants and a couple of camp shirts. I had one pair of perfectly broken in walking boots and about six pairs of the best wool socks I could buy at the the post exchange in Stuttgart. I had also bought a windbreaker/ sweatshirt which I either wore as a jacket or tied around my waist flapping in the breeze behind me. Such a fashion plate I was! I readily admit, I don't dress much better now. My appearance has never been a priority with me. Maybe that's because I was always _behind_ the camera.

When I was traveling, sometimes instead of taking time to do laundry, I threw away my dirty clothes and bought new ones, all but for the socks which, along with my camera and hiking boots, were my most cherished possessions. Most of the time I wore the same clothes for days at a time.

Along with several other American photographers, I had arranged to drop off exposed film to American couriers who also delivered fresh film from the States, because film was a lot cheaper in the States than it was in Europe. I have no idea how many rolls of film I exposed in those weeks. I know I ended up with hundreds of usable prints. Every time I dropped off a bunch of rolls of film to a courier, I hoped to hell at least some of them got back to the _National Geographic_ , but I didn't take time to call in and check on them. (Note to young folks: That was before we had satellite phones, so placing an international call was a half day project, if you could get through at all.)

By the end of October everybody knew something amazing was going to happen in Berlin. The people in West Berlin were frantic. A lot of them were afraid East Germany would crack down and they'd be caught in the middle as they had been when East Germany built the Wall in the first place. Even more Berliners were eager for East Germany to allow its people to visit the West, which everybody thought would lead to the reunification of Germany. The clambering on the eastern side of the Wall could be felt everywhere in West Berlin.

I wrote a note to Tim and gave it to a _Time_ reporter who was being rotated to Poland, saying, "You were there when the Bell of Freedom rang in Poland. I hear the bell ringing in Germany. Get your ass over here RIGHT NOW!"

I stayed in the streets day and night, catching only cat naps and eating food from street vendors. I rented a hotel room for a week at a time, but sometimes I didn't visit it for days. On November 5, I went back to my room to catch a nap. The concierge handed me a note from Tim telling me where he would be waiting and asking me to bring my camera and lots of film. I took a quick shower and napped for a couple of hours.

On my way to the meeting spot, I dropped off a bunch of rolls of film to my courier, and took all the blank rolls he could spare. It wasn't enough. I stopped in a camera store and asked for all the 35mm film the merchant had. I reached in my purse for my credit card. He waved at me and a said something in German. I shook my head indicating I didn't understand. He smiled and flicked my _National Geographic_ press credentials, and said in English, "You take pictures of them tearing down the Wall and put them in your magazine. No charge."

As amazed as I was by the unheard of experience of a German merchant giving away something for free, his comment surprised me even more. I don't know what I was expecting, but knocking down the Wall wasn't it. I asked, "You think East Germany will take down the Wall?"

He shook his head and smiled, beaming. "Nein, Meine Liebchen. The Cherman _people_ vill tear down that infernal Vall!"

I all but ran to the place where Tim said he would be waiting. It was a little cafe almost directly across the street from Checkpoint Charley. Tim greeted me by patting the seat next to him and saying, "Make your self comfy, Girl-O-Mine, we're gonna sit on our asses and watch the birth of a new world order, right in front of our eyes. You got plenty-a film?"

I patted my bag and said, "'Bout 200 rolls, plus a spare camera before you ask."

He nodded. "We've got a front row seat, but we don't dare leave."

"I understand."

We took turns going to the bathroom and guarding the table. We slept sitting up. In flagrant violation of German law, the owner never closed the place because it was full of reporters and photographers who were camping out with us. The assembled mass bought breakfast, lunch, dinner and thousands of cups of coffee, so the owner was happy to let us stay. Freedom was ringing loud and clear in Berlin, and the ever-practical German merchants were cashing in. Interestingly, I saw absolutely no alcohol being consumed during that entire period. That must be some kind of world: the largest assembly of sober reporters and photographers in history. (That changed soon enough.)

I cannot begin to describe the power of the excitement in the air. We could occasionally hear shouting from the other side of the Wall as thousands of East Germans gathered in the streets demanding to be allowed to visit the West. It seemed that every West Berliner and every reporter and photographer in Europe was camped out on the western side of the Wall. It was eerily quiet on our side.

On November 9, the East German government bowed to reality and announced that East Germans could visit the West without restrictions. Evidently their actual intention was to let people through the portals in the orderly fashion the Germans do almost everything. The ordinarily sheep-like German people had other ideas. We could hear it coming like the deep rumble that precedes an earthquake. The mob from the East surged toward the Wall. Somebody on our side yelled, "Here they come!"

The guards at Checkpoint Charley stood with their arms folded and their weapons at their sides. Suddenly we could see East Germans breaching the top of the Wall. Before that day, if an East German had approached the Wall he or she would have been arrested if not shot on the spot. That night the East German guards were gone. Hell, some of the guards were probably scaling the Wall with the rest of the mob.

In one of the most amazing things I've ever seen, thousands of East Germans danced on top of of the Wall. Thousands more West Berliners joined their brethren from the western side of the Wall. That night the German people, unified for the first in decades, celebrated atop the Berlin Wall. I had set up a small tri-pod on the table holding my biggest lens. I was crying too hard to see, but I kept snapping pictures anyway. Tim stood up and said, "My God if that isn't the most incredible thing I've ever seen!"

Without thinking about it, he walked in front of the table, I growled at him, "Then get the fuck outta my god-damned shot!"

I reached in my camera bag, handed Tim my back-up camera and told him to get the hell out of my way and to go make himself useful.

About then, pandemonium broke out everywhere. From out of nowhere thousands of bottles of champagne appeared. The area around Checkpoint Charley looked like the winner's locker room after the Super Bowl. They say it was the biggest street party in European history. I don't know about that, but I do know that it was amazing.

For the only time in my life up until that point, I didn't join the party. I sat at my table and snapped pictures for hours. Tim disappeared into the crowd. After a while, I left the restaurant, too, and started working my way through the crowd. I filled over a hundred rolls of film by mid-morning the next day.

At mid-day on November 10, Tim and I met back at the hotel where we showered for the first time in days and slept in an actual bed, at least for a few hours. We were too torqued to linger long. By late afternoon we hit the streets again, separately so as to cover more ground. We spent a few more days in Germany, and then moved on to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. We surfed the wave of freedom around eastern Europe through the end of 1989 and into 1990.

Oh, my God, did I get some great shots!

We came back to Washington in late 1990 to compile our story. The lab had developed the photos I had been sending by courier. Most had been delivered safely, although there were some in the collection that clearly weren't mine and I saw some pictures in _Time_ that looked like my work. Some of the rolls of film must have got mixed up. It didn't matter. What mattered was that we got the photos out for the world to see. Those were heady days.

Tim wrote a series of articles for the magazine, which he then spent two years expanding into a book. My photos appeared in the _National Geographic_ and, for the first time, in other publications. More than a hundred of my pictures appeared in Tim's book which ended up to be an international best-seller. (Interestingly, it didn't sell that well in America. By 1992, when the book was published, the fall of the Berlin Wall was old news. Americans have very short attention spans.)

It had been a wonderful time, but, as with all such things, the really big wave soon passed, and then we all had to return to regular everyday reality. Tim went back to Australia to write his book and become a literary phenomenon. I went to visit my family in Arkansas.

To this day I have no idea why in the hell I didn't go home with Tim. I don't think the subject even came up between us. We had just spent more than a year traveling together and sharing some of the most amazing experiences imaginable, but we never even discussed staying together after the assignment was over. We had bond of love and professional respect that you'd think would have made us want to stay together. It never crossed my mind to bring up the subject. What a couple of damned fools we were!

Maybelle got up, stretched and went to bed, but not before looking out at the moonlight shining on the mountains. She knew that in her younger days that golden moon-glow would have sent her running for her camera, but she was old, tired, and her camera was downstairs.

## Chapter 11

The next day, Maybelle decided to take a break from writing. She'd been holing herself up too much. She was in a small town and she needed to let the people know she was interested in being a part of their community. She had never felt that way about a place before, but she thought maybe it was time she knuckled down and did the necessary to make a place for herself in this community. Her family wanted her to move to Little Rock, but she didn't want to do that. She loved her family, but Maybelle felt smothered when she was with them for too long.

She chose to finally settle down in western North Carolina because culturally it reminded her of the Ozarks, with the added benefit that the mountains were even more gorgeous. She thought of the Smokies as a kind of gentle mountain range. Unlike many younger mountain ranges, the ancient Appalachians were green and flowered, with only bits of rock here and there, most of which was worn down and not rough or jagged. She experienced the land as soft and almost feminine.

Being far from her family gave her the space and solitude her spirit needed. She knew in her heart when she got too feeble to live on her own she would probably have to go back to Little Rock. If it came to that, she thought it might be fun to move into the same assisted living facility where Mrs. P. lived. She pitied the poor attendants who would have to deal with the two of them.

She put those thoughts aside for a later day, and went to Miss Patty's for breakfast, chatting up the regulars. After that, she stopped at the laundry and visited with the folks there and then she stopped at WalMart for a few supplies. She called Felicia from the store and asked if she needed anything. Felicia gave Maybelle a list of items, and told her that her daughter had immediately agreed to come home, initially for a "visit".

She added, "Carlyn and Tania are flying into Raleigh. I don't like to drive that far by myself. Would you mind going along to keep me company?"

"Of course not. When are they arriving?"

"Tonight. Carlyn sounded really freaked out on the phone. I think she might have already left for the airport when I called her."

"I'll be back directly and we can leave whenever you're ready."

Maybelle made her purchases, chatted briefly with the clerk and then drove home. Felicia was waiting on the porch, and they left for the airport as soon as Maybelle put her things away.

While they were on their way to the airport, Lucy called Maybelle's cell phone. "May, Kaitlin had her baby. It's a boy and she named him Curtis. Everybody's fine."

"That's wonderful! I'll be there for the christening, but I'm not able to come right away. I've got something going on here."

"That's probably just as well, honey. Kaitlin's husband's from a huge local family and between his kin and the rest of us, the poor baby is about to be loved to death. I fear for both Kaitlin and the baby. He's the first of his generation in both families."

"What're the odds of that young'un escaping being spoiled rotten?"

"Absolutely zero."

They chatted for a few minutes and then Maybelle hung up, and apologized to Felicia, "I hate it when people talk on the phone in a car, but that was my sister calling to announce the birth of my first great-great nephew. I made an exception. I hope you don't mind."

"Not a problem. That certainly is an important call." Felicia asked Maybelle about her family, and, for the first time, Maybelle answered her. When she finished rattling off the names, ages and occupations of her various siblings, nieces and nephews, she said, "I surprised myself by doing that. I never share personal information about myself, but the kids have been on me to write down my story for them, and I guess writing all that stuff down made it seem easier to talk about. I'm not sure I like that, because I've spent my whole life bein' a kind of pathologically private person.

"I reckon it doesn't seem there's much I can do about it, though. The genie's out of the bottle, and it's not gonna go back in voluntarily."

Felicia smiled and patted Maybelle's hand, "I won't tell anyone."

Maybelle laughed out loud. "That's baloney and we both know it. Everybody in town will know all my business before breakfast tomorrow." Felicia looked hurt and annoyed until she saw the twinkle in Maybelle's eyes that said it was okay.

Felicia said, "Oh, you!" They both laughed, and Maybelle seized the opportunity to reach out and squeeze Felicia's hand. Felicia's face returned to the pinched and pale expression she had worn since she got the first call from Carlyn. She held onto Maybelle's hand, and did not let go until they pulled into the airport parking garage and she needed both hands to steer.

From the minute Carlyn and Tania walked to the arrivals lounge, Maybelle could tell they both needed some serious mothering. She let Felicia take care of Carlyn, and she zeroed in on Tania.

On the way home, Maybelle sat in the back seat with the child, who was very quiet and seemed disoriented, perhaps partly from fatigue and jet-lag, but Maybelle thought it was also due to something much deeper. By the time they arrived at the house, it was fairly late and Tania was ready to go to bed. Before they went inside, Maybelle invited Tania to go for a walk in the mountains the next day, and Tania accepted.

Maybelle said, "Knock on my door when you're ready. I get up very early."

Tania said, "I'm still on California time, so I'll probably sleep pretty late according to your time."

"That's fine. I'll be around all day."

She went inside and decided to write for a while because she was too keyed up to sleep.

I was at loose ends for a while after those crazy days in Europe. I missed Tim, but he was off becoming a literary celebrity in Australia and I didn't hear from him very often.

I went to New Orleans for a while and stayed with Lucy. She had just moved to a new job at a super-trendy place and was very busy, but we spent some time together every day, even if it was just me hanging out in the kitchen of the restaurant, mostly getting in her way because I am absolutely no help in a kitchen except for washing dishes.

After that I went to California and spent some time with David's family.

I was too young to retire and had not lost my taste for travel or photography. I needed to get back to work, even if I knew that nothing would ever approach the excitement or importance of what we did in 1989. Still, I had do do something.

For some reason I had a hankering to go back to Asia. I called the _National Geographic_ and asked if anybody needed a photographer in Japan. They offered to send me to Okinawa where a research group was doing a study on the impact of pollution on crustaceans. I thought that sounded like the perfect assignment for me: sitting on a beach for hours on end watching snails. I needed to slow down. That assignment was just what thing I needed.

I spent the next few months kneeling in tidal pools taking pictures of snails. It's hard for a photographer even of my skill level to make snails look good. In between taking pictures that sort of amounted to snail porn, I took a lot of amazing photos of the beaches and mountains of Okinawa.

At one point, I took a break from the crustaceans project and went on what the Australians would call walkabout. I kind of retraced some of my earlier ramblings around the home islands. Japan had changed a lot since I arrived there for the first time in the Fifties. Two things had not changed. It was still the cleanest country I have ever seen and it was as photogenic as ever. I revisited a lot of my old haunts, including the monastery where I had met Brother Andrew and Tim.

I spent a couple of weeks there, soaking up the quiet and the peace of the place. The Masters, who were all new since the last time I had visited, got a kick out of the fact that I couldn't meditate worth a damn but I could sit still longer than most of the most senior monks. That's kind of funny when you think about what a fidgety britches I am in about every other respect.

I visited Tim in Australia, but he was busy writing books and being the toast of Australia's literary set. He was more than willing to share the glory with me in view of the fact that my pictures were featured prominently in _Let Freedom Ring_. I thought that was nice of him, and I was happy to accept my share of the royalty payments, but I wasn't interested in hanging out with the literary set at wine and cheese parties.

I have always been self-conscious about my lack of education. Hanging out with literary types freaked me out partly because I was afraid they would think I was an ignorant hick, and partly because I always thought about half of those people were big phonies who were probably as ignorant as I am. They just hid it better. To me a phony is the worst kind of a liar. Frankly, as much as I loved Tim, at that point in his life he was kind of full of himself, too. I think he had started believing his press a little bit. I cleared out before I shot off my mouth and did any permanent damage to our friendship.

After that, I returned to the snails in Okinawa.

At the end of the assignment, before heading back to the US, I visited Vietnam. That was a mistake. It only reminded me of what a waste the whole thing had been. The Communist regime had robbed Saigon [I kept getting in trouble with my guides because of my adamant refusal to call it Ho Chi Minh City] of much of its color and charm. I canceled my proposed side trip to DaNang which was supposed to include a boat trip up the Mekong River. I know those trips are increasingly popular with Vets who are returning to Vietnam in droves, bringing their wives and kids. Maybe that kind of thing may help them heal. I chose not to disturb the ghosts of all the people (American and Vietnamese) who died because of the inability of their respective governments to deal with a truly evil genius. I have to live with the part I played in that. Going back to the Delta wouldn't help me.

It was gratifying to see that the jungle has grown back and the countryside of Vietnam is as beautiful and photogenic as it was before the war. That's one of the great things about Mother Nature. Give her time, and she can heal about any injury humans may do to her. Sometimes I worry that, with the incessant human assault on our Earth, Mother Nature may be falling behind in her cleanup efforts. I don't usually think of myself as an environmentalist, but I've realized recently that, having spent most of my life taking pictures of beautiful scenery and working with scientists studying creatures that are highly sensitive to environmental contamination or habitat changes, I have turned into a total tree hugger. Sometimes it's embarrassing. I can (and often do) go to pieces over reading newspaper articles about oil spills in oceans or rivers, or fish kills on formerly pristine beaches. I can (and often do) rant for hours on the subject of the short-sightedness of the world's political leaders who refuse to cooperate in what I see as humanity's number one duty.... I better quit with that before I get carried away.

Anyway, the countryside of Vietnam seems to have survived the combined efforts of France, America and the Communists to destroy it. The scars in the souls of a people who suffered through so many years of civil war, which other countries then exploited and turned into a battleground for a wider conflict, may never heal.

Before I could book a flight back to the states, the _National Geographic_ contacted me through the hotel and told me that Nick was looking for me. The _National Geographic_ had finally been able to get visas for Americans to go to China. Nick wanted to know if I wanted to go with him.

How fast can you say "Hell, yeah!!"?

I met Nick in Hong Kong where we spent a few days collecting supplies and hanging out with a bunch of other reporters and photographers who were between assignments. I guess Hong Kong was the hot spot for photographers and reporters to hang out between assignments, sort of like Bangkok had been in the olden days when Tim and I first met. It was never safe for me to hang around doing nothing. That was usually a good way for me to get into trouble, and I could get into enough trouble on my own without a bunch of bored reporters egging me on.

Nick and I spent a few days getting reacquainted and stocking up for our trip.

That trip lasted nearly two years. It was not our original intention, but we ended up sort of retracing Marco Polo's route backwards, from the land of the Khan to Italy. Nick turned the trip into one of those big coffee table books. It sold pretty well and won a bunch of awards for both of us.

At the end of the trip, we stayed in Venice for a while. Neither of us spoke any Italian, but we both spoke fluent Spanish, which is similar enough in vocabulary. Many of the people we met spoke some English and we could make ourselves understood in a sort of Spanglish with a few words of Italian thrown in. We managed to get along okay. We liked the food and the wine, and we loved the Italian people, but a couple of months of sitting around was enough for both of us, however. Nick decided to take the opportunity to go to Antarctica. Once again, I passed on the Icebox down under.

I stayed in Europe and visited all the tourist spots in Italy, and, while I was in the neighborhood, I visited France and Switzerland, too. It turned out that, for all my snobbery about having no interest in the Old World, Western Europe was a really beautiful place after all. I did an article on a little village in the Swiss Alps all by myself, with grammatical help from the editorial staff. It didn't win any awards, but it was a nice little filler article, and I got nice notes from Tim, Melissa and Nick telling me they liked it. I walked on air for a while after that.

I visited Melissa in Ireland and stayed for six months, visiting one incredibly beautiful place after another. I published an article in an Irish art magazine which consisted of nothing but close-up photos of grass, of every imaginable shade of green. I especially liked the fact that the magazine published the whole spread with no captions at all. The editors let the photos speak for themselves. That's the one and only time in my life that ever happened. I was thrilled!

Of all the stuff I've published, that is my favorite photo spread, but most of my photojournalist friends made fun of it for being so "artsy-fartsy". That made me mad. I never really gave much of a damn what anybody thought of me, personally. That was definitely a good thing, because I shudder to think what people actually must have thought of me over the years. I took serious offense at people not taking my work seriously, because my work was always the most important thing in my life.

I'm a decrepit old lady who will die soon. My work may not last forever, but it will be around a lot longer than me.

Then again, maybe it will last a very long time. I love to look through old photos of what things looked like a hundred years ago. It gives me a sense of history and context for understanding the present. Maybe it's delusions of grandeur, but I have visions of photographers and/or researchers pulling up my photos in a hundred years as part of their research. They won't know or care that I never settled down with a husband or had kids, or that I swore and drank and got into fights. All they'll know about is the pictures I took. They speak for themselves.

While I was in the general neighborhood, something in me wanted to go back to Germany, but I managed to resist the temptation. I had seen the very best of Germany. I didn't want to see the everyday, ordinary Germany. I think that was wise, but it was not easy to avoid going back to Berlin. How do you not give in to the urge to return to the place where the greatest thing in your life happened? I'm glad I didn't go back. I prefer to remember Berlin the way I experienced it.

I could not resist the desire to go to Russia, however. Melissa wanted to go there, too, so we went together on a vacation. We had no magazine assignment. We were supposed to be just tourists, but she's a writer and I'm a photographer. I took pictures and she took notes. She sold a long feature article about our trip to an Irish travel magazine and I got part of the royalties for that.

For the record, I was very disappointed in the part of Russia I saw. I'm sure I'd have loved to get out in the wilderness and experience the amazing rivers and mountains. Unfortunately all we saw was the Baltic Coast and then Moscow. Basically I saw two things: the disgusting opulence of the pre-Revolutionary nobility in St. Petersburg, which made me understand why the revolution occurred in the first place; and, the shabby, dreariness of life in Russia after three quarters of a century of Communism, which proved to my satisfaction that Communism was not the answer the Russians needed. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Melissa and our guides had a couple of long vodka-induced discussions about whether or not revolutions are ever worth the price the people have to pay for them. As best I can recall, the opinions were mixed. The Russians, who were still in the process of dealing with the aftermath of decades of communism followed by the collapse of the Soviet regime, thought that revolution was never a good idea. Melissa, who's kind of a radical, hot-head when she's sober and a complete maniac when she's drunk, thought that every country needs a revolution every few years, citing Thomas Jefferson in support of her theory. I called her a liar, but later I looked it up. Jefferson did say that. Seems to me he was as nuts as Melissa or maybe he was drunk when he said it, too. I can't imagine a rational, sober person making a ludicrous statement like that.

I didn't give an opinion because I can see the issue in several ways. Besides, I was really drunk at the time, and – unlike my dearly beloved Melissa – I am able to refrain from shooting off my mouth with a bunch of inane drunken blather just because some other drunk asks my opinion. It's ironic that I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when I'm sober, but I achieve an amazing level of reticence when I've been drinking. Go figure.

I've had a few more decades to think about that since then, and I'm sober now. Maybe I got interested in the topic because I was on the ground in Poland in '88 and Germany in '89. Visiting Russia after the collapse of communism gave me some more ideas to chew on. I've talked to a lot of reporters and researchers who are a lot smarter than me. I've even read a bunch of books on the subject in recent years. I think revolutions are kind of like nuclear warheads. There are times and places when it may be necessary to use them. The trick is to keep the explosion under control and to manage the aftermath, as happened in the American Revolution and in Poland in 1988. If the revolutionary leaders can do that, there's a chance a lot of good might come out of it. If a country can learn to make adjustments on an on-going basis, it's got a good chance of survival for at least a few hundred years.

On the other hand, if the revolutionary leadership loses control, a bloodbath can occur which may take centuries to heal. I think France and Rwanda are good examples of that. There's no doubt in my mind that both of those revolutions needed to happen, but the damage done when they got out of control was almost worse than the original problem. France appears to be finally reaching some kind of even keel, but it's taken more than two hundred years. Rwanda? I think it will take a few centuries there, too – after the killing finally stops.

Then there's the even more hideous problem of a revolution that is firmly in control of a person or movement that uses it for evil purposes: China under Mao; Germany under Hitler; Russia under the Communists; Vietnam under Ho; Cambodia under Pol Pot; Uganda under Amin. These are leaders who think they're God and who can and should dictate every aspect of peoples' lives. What happens is that even after the mass killing ends, the people do not immediately regain their ambition, their creativity, their passion. Worst of all, they have often lost their dreams. I hope there's a special place in Hell for dream-killers.

I did not intend to go into that, but I'm going to leave it in here to make a couple of points. I know that my wacko pinko liberal friends have always felt that I suffered from brainwashing by the Navy. I hardly ever ventured to give my political opinion in front of Nick or Tim or – God forbid! – Melissa, because I knew they would come down on me like a ton of bricks for supporting the military industrial complex. They were all better educated, better read and more eloquent than me. I kept my opinions to myself, but that didn't mean I didn't have opinions. I listened carefully to their arguments and I asked a lot of questions. Over the years I have read almost all of the books they mentioned in their tirades.

Turns out I agreed with some of what they said, and I disagreed with some of it, too, for what I think are some pretty damned good reasons.

The main thing I ended up feeling was kind of demeaned and disrespected by people I love, who always seemed to think that my difference of opinion was because I was brainwashed or stupid. I am uneducated, inarticulate and I see things differently from them. I am not stupid or uninformed. I've always kind of resented the way my friends dismissed my opinions.

I have never talked politics with my family because they think I'm a wacko, liberal pinko like my friends. I supposed that compared with some of their right-wing Republican ideology, I kind of am. We could never have any political conversations that didn't turn into arguments because for the most part a lot of Americans (my family included) won't even try to look at things from any perspective other than their own. That has always made me feel disrespected and demeaned from the opposite direction, because I can look at issues from a lot of different perspectives after all the traveling I've done.

I'm letting myself go off on a tangent here for this reason: I think both extremes are misguided and dangerous. Political decisions should never, ever, ever under any circumstances be based on ideology or political theory. They should be totally pragmatic, based on the needs of the people at the time. They should be subject to change when circumstances change. And there should be an element of humility and kindness in political discussions that has been lacking in almost every political conversation I've ever witnessed.

Which is why I usually don't participate in those discussions. End of rant, and back to my story....

At one point, in the mid 1990's, I had the opportunity to work with Philippe Cousteau again for a while. I didn't like being cooped up on the research vessels with so many other people, most of whom were less than half my age, but it was fun to be out on the water again and to renew a few old acquaintances. The Cousteau team was always on the cutting edge of technology, and it was fun for me to work with the latest underwater cameras and other gizmos. Working with that team was a 24/7 learning experience, which was fun but exhausting. I was too old for that kind of intensity. I didn't stick around long, but I learned a lot and I'm glad to have had the opportunity.

In early 1999, I was invited to Washington for a meeting. Based on my previous experience, I expected some kind of cherry assignment. I walked into that meeting expecting to be sent to someplace I'd never been – like maybe Cuba or North Vietnam or Tibet – all of which are places I wanted to visit. I went into the meeting pretty excited.

The editor in chief quashed my enthusiasm immediately when he informed me that because I was turning 65 that year, management felt that I was too old to be traveling around the world taking pictures. They offered me a job as a photo editor at HQ in Washington.

If I wasn't such a touchy and contrary old bitch and if I'd thought about it for half a second, I'd have taken the job because it would have been a perfect opportunity for me to learn more about digital photo editing and all the cool new electronic technology that was coming out almost daily. It also would have given me a chance to mentor younger photographers. Unfortunately, all I heard was them calling me an old woman and telling me I was no longer good for the thing I had spent half of my life doing with single-minded passion. I lost my temper and told them to shove their god-damned job where the sun don't shine, and I stormed out of the meeting.

I retired, effective immediately, and walked away from the _National Geographic_ without even a gold watch. I have this damnable habit of getting pissed off and burning my bridges! I may be old, but I don't seem to be very wise.

Soon after that, I found out that they had done the same thing to Nick, who was going to turn 65 the same month as me. Nick had reacted about the same way I had and was, at that time, in Mexico apparently trying to see how much tequila and cerveza an old dude could drink and still survive, or maybe survival wasn't what he had in mind.

I tracked him down in Cancun. God, what an awful place! There was nothing of any interest to me in Cancun, which consisted of a bunch of high rise hotels and stupid tourist traps catering to honeymooners and college kids, with lousy food and cheap beer.

I suggested to Nick that we have our revenge on the bastards who were calling us old. He asked what I had in mind. I suggested we do a tour of South America or Africa, and publish the results, either freelancing with magazines or in book form. He agreed instantly.

While Nick spent a couple of weeks sobering up and getting back into shape, we figured out our finances, which were pretty good. Both of us had lived most of our lives on expense accounts and spent little money on ourselves. Nick was divorced and his kids were grown, so he had no immediate financial commitments. Between us we had a pretty good war chest to get us started on our new lives as free-lancers. Turns out we really didn't need it.

We contacted several travel magazines to inquire if they'd be interested in publishing articles about travel in South America, and got very positive responses. We were amazed at the kind of money they were willing to pay us. Hell, if I knew I could have made so much money free-lancing, I'd have quit the _National Geographic_ years before!

I bought a digital camera so I wouldn't have to lug around so many rolls of film and we bought a portable computer, which looked like a small TV set with a handle on top. Nick could use it to compose his stories, and it had a photo-editor for my pictures. The editor at the magazine that offered to buy our stories had one of their IT people explain to us how to access the Internet so we could upload our stuff directly to the magazine from wherever we were. We spent a lot of time the first few weeks we had Internet access surfing the Web and marveling about how much easier our jobs would have been in the past if we'd had such an amazing tool.

We started our trip in Yucatan, visiting ancient ruins, modern tourist destinations, and hanging out in cantinas with the locals.

We got pretty good at finding information on the Internet when we could get hooked up to a phone line and we thought it was cool. We knew, however, the real test of the utility of the computer would come when it came time to submit our story. After Nick wrote the article and I picked out and edited the photos to go with it, we checked into a hotel that had good phone lines and uploaded the article and the photos.

It took a few hours, but I was totally blown away by the fact that I could send photos directly from my camera in Mexico to the magazine in New York. No more developing pictures in messy, smelly darkrooms. No mailers or couriers of questionable reliability. No waiting for the mail to deliver the stories to the magazine. Just a phone line and a little TV-like piece of equipment. I thought it bordered on the miraculous. I still do.

I have to say that experiencing the Internet for the first time was on a par with developing my first photos: it was life-changing. Since then, I have made it a point to buy the latest model computers, cell phones and other electronic gadgets as soon as they are available. And don't even get me started on how much I love my satellite phone with its global wireless Internet connection! I may be an ornery old biddy, but I am not one for letting technology pass me by. It drives me crazy when people who are younger than I am refuse to even try to adapt to changing technology. (Once again, folks, if the shoe fits.....)

She chuckled knowing that among her siblings only Lucy knew how to use email. The rest of them wouldn't touch a computer. Maybelle knew that the younger generation (if their parents were to even let them read her story) would hold that out to their parents and say, "See!!???" That's exactly why she put it in there.

Over the next few months, Nick and I submitted stories to several magazines, and we had photos and notes stored up on floppy discs for stories that Nick ended up submitting to several magazines over the period of a couple of years afterward. The money was fabulous, and we got to be kind of famous, at least in photojournalism circles.

Nick and I both turned 65 in December 1999. The rest of the world was getting ready for a huge party of its own. We decided to take a vacation from our travels and join the celebration. We got Melissa and Tim on a conference call and suggested we all get together to celebrate our birthdays and to ring in the new millennium together. Tim lived in Sydney and he told us that Australia was planning the biggest party in the world and his living room had a view of Sydney Harbor. We accepted his invitation before he got the words out.

Melissa, Nick and I planned to arrive in Sydney right after Christmas. In the meantime, Tim invited a bunch of other people we all knew to the party. Most of them were veterans of the _National Geographic_ , but some were news reporters and freelance photographers we had met along the way. There were about twenty of us camped out in Tim's house for the Millennium Celebration/Birthday Bash.

It was a lot like the old days, except we all drank a lot less, slept a lot more and had a much harder time with that whole sleeping-on-the-floor thing. The moaning and groaning in the mornings did not come from couples copulating in sleeping bags in the far corners of the house, it came from a bunch of old farts trying to get up off the floor to go to the bathroom. I was grateful that, given my place in Tim's life, I didn't have to sleep on the floor.

We watched (and photographed) the fireworks from Tim's lanai. Oh, my Lord, the Aussies know how to throw a party! Somebody took a picture of the finale of the fireworks and edited in the words: "Happy Birthday, Nick and Maybelle!" I cherish that photo. It was the most fun party I ever attended other than Berlin in 1989. It was the first party at which I was one of the guests of honor since the little party at the orphanage when I graduated from high school.

After we recovered from our hangovers, Nick and I went back to South America and Melissa tagged along. The three of us traveled together for a while. It didn't take long for me to realize that Nick and Melissa were more interested in exploring a relationship with each other than either of them was interested in exploring South America with me. I suggested we go our separate ways.

They went to Ireland, and I proceeded to travel around South America by myself for a while. When I realized how stupid that was, I invited David's daughter, Nikki, to join me. She had just finished college, and hadn't found a job. She had majored in English; I figured she could be my writer. We traveled together for a few months, and I was thrilled with her company. Unfortunately, she soon tired of the road.

Next I invited one of Charlene's kids to join me, which pissed off Charlene and Ray so much it took a while to repair our relationship. They wouldn't even consider letting their daughter traipse around the jungles of South America with an old lady, especially one with my lack of common sense or morals.

Frankie's son had just got divorced and was kind of at loose ends. I invited him to join me and he traveled with me for a few weeks. He hated the grind of traveling the way I did it, and soon went home.

I have to admit I was annoyed by that. I had been on the road continuously for decades. Virtually all of my friends were gypsies like me. For me traveling was a life-style. It came as a surprise to me that other people would not see the excitement in it. I guess I never realized until very late in the game how weird my life has been by other peoples' standards. Nevertheless, I was not ready to give it up.

Soon after that, I met a young writer in Buenos Aires and she and I traveled together for a while. For the first time in my career, I couldn't keep up with my partner. Eventually, I thought that it might be time for me to quit the road, and find a home. I was too old to be schlepping cameras and computers around the world, sleeping in cheap hotels or on the floor in people's homes.

A few years prior to that, Lucy had moved from New Orleans to Denver. I love mountains, so I decided to move to Colorado to be near her. I had thousands of prints that I wanted to convert to digital images, for cataloging and tagging. Most of them had never been published, and I thought there were probably plenty that were good enough to publish if I weeded through them and edited them.

I was intrigued with the idea of free-lancing on a more or less full-time basis. I had enough of a backlog of pictures to illustrate a lot of articles.

Lucy offered me a spare bedroom in her apartment, which I filled with computer equipment, scanners, and four large file cabinets of photos that had been moved from their original home in Alexandria to Ray's church and, from there, to Lucy's apartment. I bought a club chair that folded out into a single bed and stuck it in a corner. I spent about a year and a half, working at least a few hours seven days a week scanning prints and then organizing my newly digital photo library, selecting the best photos to submit for publication.

Nikki came to stay with us for a while and she wrote a bunch of articles around some of the photos, which we submitted to various magazines. We also put together three full-length photo books, which we published through the _National Geographic_ Society. I made more money the first five years after I retired than I'd ever made while I was working for a salary.

When I finally came up for air after finishing that project, I realized I didn't like Denver. I don't like cities very much and I especially disliked living in an apartment complex with a bunch of up-and-coming young professionals. They made me feel old and decrepit. I was old and decrepit but I refused to accept the reality of that. So, I did what I had always done when I found myself facing an uncomfortable truth: I hit the road.

I went to Ireland to visit Melissa and Nick, who had gotten married. They wanted me to stay with them, and I was tempted, but I felt like an intruder in their world.

After that I made a sort of around-the-world trip visiting old friends and a lot of my favorite places. Somebody dubbed it "Maybelle's Farewell Tour." I refused to admit it at the time, but it probably was my last trip around the world.

While I was in China, Tim contacted me and invited me to go to Japan with him. I met him in Tokyo and we went back to the monastery where Brother Andrew had first introduced us. We stayed there for three weeks of blessed quiet.

That monastery was about the only place I've ever visited where I could sit still without a camera in my hand. They always took away my camera while I was there, after they caught me taking pictures on the grounds. I assumed they did that to protect the privacy of the monks and other visitors, but it had the added benefit of preventing me from taking pictures when I was supposed to be resting. I could sit still for hours, although I never did learn to meditate. Mostly I sat still and day-dreamed – generally about getting perfect shots of amazing things. God, I'm a such a freaking workaholic!

After that, we went to Okinawa and lazed away a week or so on a series of fabulous beaches. One afternoon, while we were sitting in low chairs with our feet in the water and beers by our sides, Tim asked me, "How come we never got married?"

I said, "Probably because nobody would have either of us."

He said, "That's not what I meant. You forget I've been married three times. How come we never married each other?"

I thought about that, and said, "Well, back in the day when we first met and I was so blown away by you, you were a draft dodger and a turncoat, and I was a warrant officer in the United States Navy. Having a relationship with you would not have been a good career move for me."

He nodded and said, "I understand the predicament that put you in at the time. What about later? It seems to me we had so many opportunities to be together later. Why didn't we take them?"

I shook my head and said, "Probably because we were both so focused on our careers we barely ever noticed the other people in our lives. Maybe the fact that we're both a couple of damned fool idiots played a part."

"You're right about that last part."

"But, you know the main reason I think we never pursued that kind of relationship?"

"No. That's why I'm asking."

"I think we're such good friends it was never worth the risk of losing the friendship if the romance didn't work out."

He thought about that for a while and nodded, reaching out to stroke my arm, "You're probably right. You've always been my best friend. We've had some great times together, haven't we, Babe?"

"You bet! I wonder how many times we've been around the world."

"I think we probably don't want to know the answer to that."

He invited me to go back to Australia with him, and I had nothing else to do and no place else I needed to be, so I accepted. He showed me around Sydney. I would have liked to explore the Outback because Australia was the only continent besides Antarctica that I had not explored from end to end. I kind of thought we would do that, but he seemed distracted and tired, so I didn't suggest it.

After I had been with him for a few weeks, one day he told me he thought it was time for me to leave. I said okay, thinking that he needed some alone time. I understood that, given that I was also a solitary person. I arranged to leave a couple of days later.

The day I was supposed to leave, we had breakfast on his patio overlooking the Harbor, and I called a cab to take me to the airport. We stood inside the front door to say goodbye. I kissed him, and said something along the lines of, "I'll see you next time I'm in the neighborhood. Call me if you feel like going on an adventure."

He shook his head, took me in his arms and said, "This is good-bye for good." He told me he had cancer and had declined treatment other than palliative care. He didn't think there would be a "next time" for us.

I sent the cab away, took my suitcases back into the bedroom and told Tim that I was staying put, whether he liked it or not. He almost collapsed with gratitude. We had tried so hard not to make demands on each other for so long, he couldn't even bring himself to ask me to stay with him when he was dying, and needed me more than ever. He didn't have to ask. I didn't give him a choice.

Once I made it clear that I was not going to leave him, no matter what he said or did, we cried in each others arms for a long time over all the things that we had never said but should have said and all the demands on each other we never made but could have made. We promised to spend whatever time he had left together, and we made it clear to each other that any and all requests either of us might have were at least negotiable.

It may sound strange to say, but we were happy with each other during the year that followed. He didn't feel too sick until very near the end. The pain medication helped a lot. As long as he got plenty of rest, he had at least a few good hours most days. As he got sicker, sometimes we stayed in bed most of the day, reading or talking. When he started to get really weak, we would lie in bed and I would read to him for hours. Sometimes we got books on tape, but he preferred for me to read to him.

I had all my photos stored in an online database. He decided he wanted to see all my pictures. I had over 100,000 at that point. I think we looked at every one of them. I could dissolve in tears at the memory of how much he liked my pictures. He was my biggest hero in life and he admired my work! I am still blown away by that.

He had never taken the time to digitize all of his photos, but we looked at all the ones we could find in online copies of his articles. His eye was amazing. His photos are very different from mine, but I think every picture he ever took was a masterpiece.

He lived for a year from the time he told me he was sick. I was at his side every minute of every one of those days. When he finally decided to let people know he was sick, our friends came from all over the world to say good-bye. There were a few weeks when all we did was entertain company. I was kind of irritated by that because I wanted him all to myself.

People seemed to understand that, and soon they left us alone other than to make it known that if we needed anything, help would swoop in from the four corners of the world.

We talked about getting married, but decided we didn't need to formalize our relationship. What we had together transcended any kind of definition and needed no legal or religious sanction. Our bond was a sacred thing that could not be named and needed no external blessing.

Tim made me the administrator of his estate and left all his money and property to me, which was quite a fortune as it turned out. Even before he died, I met with his attorney and set up a photography scholarship at the University of Sydney. I made arrangements to donate his house to the University on the condition that it be used as a photography museum or something like that. I threw in some money to have all his photos, which he kept in a vault in the Bank of Sydney, digitized and stored online and available for the students. He cried when I told him what I had done, and thanked me with his body language only, because he was so moved he couldn't speak.

Tim wanted his ashes to be scattered over the Great Barrier Reef and did not want a memorial service or a funeral of any kind. He put out the word via email to his far flung friends that he wanted them to have something of a global Irish wake. He asked all his friends to pour a libation to the photography gods in his honor after he passed.

The first thing I did after he died in my arms was to send out a blast email announcing to his mailing list that his ordeal was over. I have no doubt that there were drunk reporters and photographers around the world that night. At least I sincerely hope so, because that was what Tim wanted.

As for me, for only the second time in my life, I did not join the party. I carried Tim's ashes north on a train and chartered a dive boat just for myself. The captain was one of the guys Tim worked with when he first moved to Australia. The guy had been a mate at the time and had eventually bought into the company. He remembered Tim and was very respectful of what I was doing.

We went out over the Reef. I scattered Tim's ashes in the water and watched the marine life teeming in the crystal sea. I alternately sobbed and vomited over the side of the boat. I wasn't seasick, I was just plain sick at the thought of having to live in a world without Tim in it.

The captain was very patient and he circled the area for hours while I cried and cried and cried.

I alternately kicked myself for being such an idiot as to piss away the opportunity for a lifetime spent with that incredible man and feeling wave upon wave upon wave of gratitude for the wonderful love we had and the incredible life he gave to me when he invited me to join his profession. I still haven't reconciled those conflicting sets of feelings, but I somehow know that the choices we made were the right ones.

The fact is, Tim and I would never have been happy settling down to a life of marriage and family with each other, or with anybody else. He married three other women and they all divorced him because he couldn't tolerate staying on the same continent for very long. He and I may have spent more time apart than we spent together, but the time we were together was stupendous. That was the important thing for both of us. I take comfort in that.

The next day I flew from Queensland to Honolulu and from there back to the US Mainland. Somewhere along the way, I decided I needed to find a permanent home.

I guess the truth is I may have been an old lady who needed a place to live until I die, but I still didn't really want to settle down, so I took the opportunity to spend the winter camping up in the mountains. I needed to go away and cry myself to sleep every night for a couple of months. After that, I needed to learn how to fall asleep again without crying.

During my time in the mountains I learned to love taking pictures all over again. It was almost as though my own love for photography and Tim's had both joined in me and I started taking pictures with an almost virgin passion and a new eye.

My family had been on my ass for years to write my story. Nikki wants to use it as an outline for a photo-book to share with the family. I was supposed to spend the winter writing this memoir.

In order to avoid doing the hard work of facing my past, I spent most of my waking hours over the winter taking pictures and notes about those foxes. That ended up getting me another publishing credit, this time in a scientific journal.

And so, here I am. I've been damned near everywhere, done damned near everything, and enjoyed pretty much every minute of my life from the time I left Little Rock until now.

I don't see any reason why I have to stop enjoying myself or stop taking beautiful pictures just because I'm old. I'm in good health for my age. What I need to do is to find a way to have my fun at a little slower pace and maybe without sleeping on floors in cantinas and eating God only knows what kind of shit in filthy dives all over the world.

I reckon there are certain members of my family who maybe haven't got this far in the story, or, if they have, they're pretty appalled. I'm sorry if you think less of me for the way I've lived my life. But, I will say this. I do NOT apologize for anything.

I made a boatload of friends some of whom I promoted to the status of virtual kin. I never got married or had kids but I loved and was loved by the most wonderful man in the world. I befriended and mentored a bunch of young people over the years; some of their kids call me Granny. I never intentionally hurt anybody. I think I served a useful purpose by publishing beautiful pictures for people to enjoy.

I'm proud of what I've done with my life. If somebody has a problem with that, they can keep it to themselves.

That's my story.

Maybelle thought she should go back and edit that ending. It sounded a little too defiant. Then she realized that it was defiant for a reason. The main reason she didn't move closer to her family was because, as much as she loved them, it drove her crazy that they wanted her to fit herself into their world and to be the kind of person they thought "Auntie May" should be. They wanted her to behave like the other nice old ladies who lived in their neighborhoods and who went to their churches. Maybelle wasn't the church-going, cookie-baking kind of old lady, and quite a number of people in her family had a problem with that.

For her part, Maybelle had a problem with their expectations. Maybelle was a tough old broad who'd had to make her own way in the world, and she didn't fit into the box they wanted to put her in. She felt it was best if she lived far away and visited only occasionally. She could behave for short periods of time. She knew herself well enough to know that if she stayed too long she would give into the temptation to scandalize them just for the hell of it.

Lucy was the exception, but then Lucy had been brought up in a totally different environment than the rest of them, and she lived in Denver, not Little Rock. Lucy accepted Maybelle for who and what she was and loved her despite of it, or maybe because of it. Then again, the Arkansas branch of the family was not always sure what to do with Lucy, as well, because she lived a different kind of life-style, too, and had, also, never got married or had kids.

Interestingly it was Lucy's adopted mother who often smoothed over the rough places in those relationships. Mrs. P was a third generation Arkansan who understood both the local culture and the more cosmopolitan lives led by Lucy and Maybelle. She often mediated potential disputes because everybody in the family revered her, and if something Lucy or May did was okay by Granny P, then everybody else generally was willing to find a way to live with it.

Maybelle turned out the lights and went to bed, without bothering to undress. She'd slept in her clothes most of her adult life, and she liked getting up in the morning already dressed.

Just before she drifted off to sleep she chuckled out loud and thought: _I have turned into such a crotchety old bitch_. She found, to her delight, she was rather proud of that.

## Chapter 12

Maybelle got up the next morning, made coffee and checked the news and the weather on the computer. She was sort of at loose ends having finished writing at least the first draft of her story. She felt the same let-down she had always had when she came to the end of an important assignment.

Besides getting her family off her back, she thought the exercise of writing her memoir had served another important function as well. She was surprised to learn that she had enjoyed doing it. What was even more surprising, the exercise seemed to have poked a hole in the wall of reserve with which she had always surrounded herself. She had never talked about herself. All of her friends and most of her family knew very little about what made Maybelle tick.

That had never mattered much with her colleagues who, like Maybelle, lived in the here-and-now moment of the project they were working on at the moment. Writing her personal story made her decide that she needed to be more forthcoming with her neighbors if she expected to become part of this new community. It came as a sort of delightful surprise to learn that she did want to sink roots in her new home town.

The other thing she realized was that she needed a new project of some sort to keep her busy and out of trouble. She pondered that while she puttered around the house, dusting the furniture and running the sweeper. Then she gathered up some laundry and put it in a bag by the front door.

About ten, Tania knocked. Maybelle invited the girl in for some tea. Tania accepted. She laughed when Maybelle handed her a cup of Japanese green tea, "Oh, thank you, ma'am. I was expecting that nasty sweet iced tea that Maw Maw makes. This is really good. Tastes like the stuff we used to get at the sushi place."

Maybelle said, "It's from Japan. I order it online and make it according the the traditional Japanese methods."

Tania howled, "You order stuff online?"

"Sure. Why are you surprised by that?"

"My mom barely knows how to use a computer, and Maw Maw probably doesn't even know what the Internet is. You're older than both of them. I guess I'm just surprised."

Maybelle laughed and said, "I uploaded my first photos to the Internet from a hotel room in Mexico in 1999. I've been online ever since. I like to think of myself kind of a Tech-nerd."

The tension around Tania's eyes disappeared for a moment as she laughed, with her head back and her mouth open. Some of the tension crept back almost immediately after that, but Tania was clearly intrigued. She said, "I want to know all about your life!"

Maybelle looked at her with a strange expression and said, "Be careful what you ask for, dear."

"What do you mean by that?"

Maybelle changed the subject, asking, "Do you know anything about website design?"

"A little. We did a unit on website design in my computer class last year. We had to make a homepage for ourselves. It was fun. Somebody else built the website for my mom's gallery, but I kept it updated. Why?"

"Well, I'm looking for a new project to keep me busy." She winked and added, "I tend to get into trouble if I don't stay busy.

"Anyway, I'm thinking that designing a website might be fun. Maybe you could help me." Maybelle stood up, drained her cup and waved her hand in the air as if to erase that thought, "But, we can talk about that later. Right now, I want to introduce you to those mountains!

"Let me see your shoes."

Tania was wearing running shoes. Maybelle made a face. "Those will do for today, but we gotta get you some proper hiking boots." She pulled up her pants leg to reveal worn, but polished and well-cared-for hiking boots. Tania made a face, and Maybelle added, "They're not much in the way of fashion, but they'll keep your feet dry and snakes can't bite through 'em."

Tania shuddered at the thought.

Maybelle pulled several bottles of water from the fridge and dumped them into her backpack. She hooked on her GPS, which prompted another gale of delighted laughter from Tania. Then she opened her camera bag, selected a small camera and handed it to Tania. She took her favorite Rolex and stuck a smallish telephoto lens in the bag just because she couldn't help herself.

She said, "Do you have a cell phone?"

"Yes."

"Turn it off."

Tania made a face, but did as she was told. "You want me to just leave it here?"

"No. Put it in your pocket. If you need it you'll have it, but there will be no incoming calls or text messaging while we're hiking.

"What do you know about photography?"

"I love taking pictures. By the way, I looked you up on the Internet. Your work is amazing! I hope you'll share some of your pictures with me."

"As I said, be careful what you wish for."

"How many photos to you have?"

"Last time I updated my inventory, I had well over 100,000 posted on-line, but I've got a several hundred more that I've taken recently that I haven't cataloged yet."

"How long have you been taking pictures?"

They walked across the back yard toward the mountains. Felicia waved from the back porch. Maybelle and Tania waved back and Maybelle said, "I bought my first Nikon at the Navy base in Okinawa in 1953. I took a lot of pictures as an amateur while I was in the Navy. I retired from the Navy in 1973, and went to work for the _National Geographic_. That's when I started taking pictures professionally."

Tania muttered, "You're gonna need a lot of band-width for that website!"

Maybelle asked, "How much do you think it will cost to register a domain and for monthly hosting service? You're right, I'm thinking we're gonna end up with a very large website."

"I don't know how much it will cost for the hosting. That could be expensive because I think it's based on the size of your site, but a domain name should be cheap."

Maybelle laughed and struck a pose, "Do you think I look like a Go Daddy Girl?"

Tania laughed so hard she got the hiccups.

Their conversation jumped back and forth from website design to photography, with Maybelle frequently interrupting to point out particular birds, animals or geological structures.

After a couple of hours, they sat down to rest and have a snack. Tania was quiet. Maybelle closed her eyes and focused on the sounds of the forest. Tania asked, "Do you know about what happened to my family?"

Maybelle pursed her lips and didn't look at Tania. She bent over to re-tie her shoes with much more concentration than was necessary. "What I know is that your family has suffered a terrible crisis, and that you're a kid who probably needs a friend right now. I'm an old lady, but I've got all the time in the world, and I'm kind of at loose ends myself. I may not be exactly the kind of friend you had in mind, but I'm here. If you want to talk, I'll listen. If you want to keep occupied so you don't dwell on your problems, then I'm willing to keep you company, because I'm a person who needs to stay busy, too."

Tania leaned back against a tree and closed her eyes, rubbing her eyes with both hands as if to erase some inner vision. "You know, all our friends – or so-called friends – turned their backs on me and my family when we lost our money. It was kinda like they didn't really care about me or Mom personally. They were only our friends because we moved in their circles and had plenty of money. Dad made some stupid decisions which he tried to fix by making some even stupider ones. He'll probably end up going to jail, which, frankly is where he belongs. He stole money from people and then ruined our family's life.

"You probably think I'm terrible for saying that."

Maybelle said softly, "As a matter of fact, I don't. Stealing is a crime. Wrecking the lives of your children oughta be one, too."

They sat there for a while in silence, letting that comment hang in the air. Tania didn't ask Maybelle to explain where that opinion came from, but Maybelle was prepared to answer her honestly if she had asked. After a while, Tania nodded and let it go at that.

Maybelle prodded gently, "Are you going to miss him?"

"Dad? Hell, no! He used to be okay but in the last few years, I guess when he started all his financial shit, he checked out. He was always out living the high life with his arty friends. He hardly ever came home. I watched the whole thing and wondered why in the hell Mom didn't throw him out. I still don't understand that.

"Does it bother you that I cuss?"

"Hell, no. I cuss. Just don't do it in front of your grandmother. She's kind of prissy about that."

Tania laughed, "She still go to that Baptist church?"

"Yep."

"You go with her?"

"Now, what the hell do you think?"

"Sorry. Stupid question.

"Anyway, Dad hasn't been much of a father to me for a while, or maybe ever. He never really showed much of an interest in me. I think the main things he likes are money and beautiful women, in that order."

"How do you feel about moving away from San Francisco?"

Tania thought about that for a long time, "Well, I thought I'd hate to leave my friends, until it turned out that I guess I didn't really have any. I will miss the city, though. There's so much going on there and it is so beautiful."

Maybelle smiled, "It has got to be one of the top ten most beautiful cities in the world. I'm generally not much for cities, but I make an exception for places like San Francisco."

"You've been there?"

Maybelle smiled and winked, "Honey, I've been _everywhere_."

Tania laughed and hit herself in the forehead with the heel of her hand, "Duh!"

They continued their hike and the farther they went, the more Tania relaxed. She was excited to learn how to operate the camera, and seemed to have a natural eye for photography, which is what Maybelle expected of the child of an artist. Maybelle noticed that Tania seemed to focus on textures. Maybelle herself was all about color and form. They almost immediately fell into a symbiosis of vision that was similar to the way Maybelle had worked with Melissa.

They returned to the house several hours later. Tania asked if Maybelle had a USB cable for the camera so she could upload her photos to her blog. Maybelle gave her the cable and asked her to do some research on how they could go about building a website. Tania headed back to her grandmother's side of the house, all but skipping in her excitement.

A little while later, Maybelle was sitting on the back stoop, drinking tea and snapping pictures of some hummingbirds at the bird-feeder. Carlyn came out of the kitchen door on Felicia's side of the house and said, "Miss Maybelle, excuse me for interrupting."

Maybelle smiled but did not turn her head, "Your not interruptin', honey. I can take pictures and talk at the same time, if you don't mind my bein' rude enough not to make eye contact." She continued to snap pictures while she talked.

Carlyn smiled at the old lady's back, and said, "I want to thank you. That hike in the mountains and the prospect of helping you build a website has made Tania excited about something for the first time in... well, in a lot longer than I care to admit. This entire mess has been hard on her, and I haven't been much help because I've been dealing with my own issues."

Maybelle said, "It was a pleasure. Everybody's on my ass about wandering around in the hills by myself, what with me bein' a decrepit old woman and all, so Tania's kind of doin' me a service by goin' with me.

"And the same goes for the website. It's something people have been suggesting to me for a long time. I coulda had a professional design and maintain it, but I'm such a damnable old control freak, I would rather do it myself. Your daughter and I will probably have a ball with our little project. We'll do a hundred things wrong, and it'll be a mess until we learn what we're doing, but it'll be fun. And that's the most important thing."

Carlyn laughed, "My mom was right: you are amazing."

"You mean because I'm old but I'm not willing to sit in my room and shrivel up until I die?"

"I wouldn't have put it that way, but... yeah."

Maybelle leaned her head back and laughed into the air. "Well, that's just how I am." Then she looked at Carlyn and said, "Let me ask you a question. I'm not tryin' to be nosy. I need to know for my own planning purposes. You gonna need my side of the house?"

"No! We want you to stay. Mama told me your suggestion about making the third floor into an apartment for Tania and me. I went up there while the two of you were gone. It is totally perfect. When I was a little girl, that was my favorite place to play. I'm going to show it to Tania later and see how she feels about it. If she doesn't like it, maybe we'll look for an apartment nearby."

Maybelle nodded and said, "Now don't take this wrong, but I want you to know that if you need any money, don't you go borrowin' it from the bank. I've got plenty and I'll make you a better deal on a loan than any bank. I'm not offering charity. I'm offering a loan, on very good terms."

"Miss Maybelle, I have to admit it may come to that. Mama bought our plane tickets to come here. I have $30 in my purse, and that is all I have to my name."

"Between your Mama and me, we'll get you back on your feet."

Carlyn's eyes filled with tears. Just at that moment a hawk flew over, Maybelle swung the camera and clicked madly. She flipped the camera around and checked the photos. Whistling softly, she held it out for Carlyn to see, "Not bad for the handiwork of an old broad? Eh?"

They were standing there smiling at each other when Felicia and Tania came outside with a basket of laundry. Tania made a disgusted face and said to her mother, "She hangs the washing outside!"

Her mother smiled and said, "Just wait until you go to bed and smell those fresh sheets!"

Maybelle, Carlyn and Felicia hung the sheets on the line while Tania chattered to her mother about her walk in the forest and to Maybelle about what she'd learned about building a website.

Maybelle held up her hands and said, "Whoa, girl! You gotta quit that verbal IM crap of multiple conversations at once. It's too confusing. One subject at a time, please! I'm an old lady. The synapses don't hop as fast as they used to."

Tania grinned and said, "That's bullshit and you know it, Miss Maybelle."

Felicia looked as though she wanted to wash Tania's mouth out with soap, but Carlyn and Maybelle both laughed. Carlyn said, "But it made you stop and focus on one thing!"

Maybelle said, "Oh, by the way, in a couple of weeks, I'm going to Arkansas for the christening of my first great-great nephew. I want you all to come with me."

Felicia raised her eyebrows and asked, "Why would you want us to come to a family function like that?"

Maybelle said, "Oh, I kinda collect family everywhere I go. There'll be folks from all over the world at the party. You're parta my family now, too, whether you like it or not. You might as well go and meet the rest of 'em."

Tania threw her arms around Maybelle and said, "Oh, that sounds like such fun, Miss Maybelle!"

Carlyn and her mother stood with their arms around each other. Felicia took out a couple of tissues from her pocket and they dabbed their eyes.

## Chapter 13

Maybelle exchanged a flurry of emails with Lucy and Charlene, the family party planners. She had asked them to arrange for a venue to have a large party following the christening reception. She suggested a local hotel instead of Ray's church and informed them that, in addition to the immediate families of the newborn, she was expecting a number of other people: Nick and Melissa and Nick's three children, their spouses and his eight grandchildren; the first several recipients of the Tim Jones Scholarship and their spouses or significant others, and a number of other quasi-family Maybelle had collected over the years, including Felicia, Carlyn and Tania. She expected up to fifty people in addition to her real brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and the new great-great-nephew who served as the the pretext for the celebration.

Maybelle wanted her Arkansas family to meet her far-flung "adopted" family, and _vice versa_. The two groups had nothing in common, but she thought they might find each other interesting enough to tolerate spending one evening together. Deep down, she didn't care if they liked each other or even particularly enjoyed the party. Maybelle's goal was, for once in her life, to have all the people she loved together in one place – whether or not they enjoyed it.

Lucy understood exactly what Maybelle wanted, perhaps even more clearly than Maybelle did. She persuaded Charlene to take charge of the christening and the family-only reception that would follow. Lucy volunteered to take responsibility for the big party, which she decided to turn into "the main event." Charlene gladly agreed because she knew that throwing big parties was something Lucy had done every day of her working life until her retirement a few months earlier and Lucy missed it. Besides, Charlene understood intuitively that the kind of party Lucy had in mind was unlike anything she would be able to accomplish.

They divided up the day. Charlene took charge of the part of the day that involved the church and the family reception. Lucy was responsible for they started calling the "after-party." Lucy and Mrs. Pennington plotted for hours and days to try to figure out how to keep the more aggressive Baptists among the family from pooping on the party while appealing to Maybelle to impose on her friends to tone it down for the benefit of the more straight-laced Little Rock contingent.

Melissa weaseled Lucy's email address out of Maybelle and reached out to Lucy directly with a suggestion that made Luce weep happily for a few minutes before placing a Transatlantic phone call to say, "Yes!"

Melissa had contacted a researcher at the _National Geographic_ as well as everyone she could track down who had ever worked with Maybelle. She had asked one of the Tim Jones Scholarship winners comb through Tim's pictures. It had taken some work, but Melissa had managed to find photos of Maybelle alone and/or with her partner(s) during every major project she had worked on at the _National Geographic_. There were wonderful pictures of Maybelle in the four corners of the world, with dozens of other photographers and writers.

Best of all, she located a couple of pictures of Maybelle and Tim together. One was a picture of Tim and Maybelle in Bangkok on what must have been one of their early clandestine meetings. A _Time_ photographer sent her a photo of Maybelle and Tim sitting at their table in the bar near Checkpoint Charley in November 1989. In the picture, Maybelle's cameras were arrayed in front of her on the table. They were ready for whatever might happen. At the moment the photographer took the picture, Maybelle and Tim were laughing and looking directly at one another; electricity arced between them even in the 20-year-old black-and-white photo.

There were pictures of Maybelle in Africa, South America, the US and all over Asia. There was one picture at Tim's Y2K party that included everybody at the party. Melissa told Lucy she couldn't figure out who took it. She proposed to Lucy that they blow up some of the best of the photos and display them around the room at the party.

Melissa said, "The way I figure it, the christening and the family party afterward are for the baby. This party we're talking about is for Maybelle. I think we should make it about her, too."

Lucy said, through more tears, "That's exactly what I had in mind. May has never had a party for herself. When she graduated from high school she shared a small party with a couple of other kids at the orphanage. The only birthday party she ever had was the the Y2K party at Tim's, which she shared with Nick and the rest of the world. She never even had a retirement party from either of her retirements. I propose to make this evening all about my amazing sister."

It was Melissa's turn to cry, "How is it that Maybelle was in an orphanage?"

Lucy said, "It's a long story. We asked May to write her memoir and she obliged, at considerable personal cost, I think. It's pretty amazing reading. I know she plans to share it with you."

Lucy added money of her own to the generous allowance Maybelle had given her for the party. She wanted to pull out all the stops. She made it clear to the Arkansas family that this party would include a bunch of people who were used to kicking up their heels. The family would have to deal with that. Even Ray agreed to attend and keep his mouth shut. He promised to leave quietly and without a scene if he found anyone's behavior too objectionable.

Maybelle, Felicia, Carlyn and Tania flew to Little Rock on the Friday before the christening. They checked into the hotel where the party was to take place on Sunday. Most of the rest of Maybelle's friends were arriving on Saturday, but Nick and Melissa arrived on Friday as well so they could have a little extra time with Maybelle. She had invited more people at the last minute, which Lucy had anticipated. Lucy already had instructed the hotel to hold several extra rooms and had told the caterers to purchase food for up to twenty extra people beyond the hundred or so they were already expecting.

Maybelle hosted a dinner party for the adult members of her family on Friday evening. Some of the older children babysat for the younger ones. Tania was invited to spend the evening at the movies with Dwight's grand-daughter and Charlene's grandson who were her age. Carlyn gave her a lecture about her behavior and admonished her not to swear. Maybelle told her to be herself and have fun.

At first there was some tension between the more straight-laced members of the family and Nick and Melissa, especially when the latter ordered beers before dinner. Maybelle had warned them about their language and had threatened to throw them out of the party if they got too bawdy with their talk, which was always a danger when Melissa was around. However, she told them that if they wanted to have a drink with dinner they should go ahead. She told them she didn't want them to have to pretend to be something they weren't, other than to try to act semi-civilized. They threatened to embarrass her just for kicks, but everyone knew they would never do that.

The tension soon eased when Nick, Maybelle and Melissa fell to reminiscing. The others listened in silence as the three friends chatted about the places they had been and the things they had seen. They provided detail and texture that Maybelle's sketchy memoir did not. The others were mesmerized by the stories, despite the occasional salty language.

Later, the family members shared stories of their reunion with Maybelle and their various adventures with her after that.

Melissa and Nick noticed that nobody mentioned how the family came to be separated in the first place. Melissa looked at Maybelle and furrowed her eyebrows. Maybelle leaned over and whispered into Melissa's ear, "Long story. Requires whiskey. Later." She jerked her chin In the general direction of the bar.

Melissa winked and said, "I'm there."

The party broke up early and Maybelle said good-night to her family and to Felicia and Carlyn. Maybelle invited Melissa and Nick to accompany her to the bar. Nick said, "You don't have to ask me twice. All that minding the p's and q's makes a man work up a thirst."

They ordered drinks and Maybelle filled them in on the general outline of her story. When she was finished, they sat quietly for a few minutes, letting the information sink in. Melissa took Maybelle's hand and held it in her lap. Nick, put his arm around the back of her chair. None of them said anything for a long time. The three friends discovered to their amazement that the information Maybelle had shared seemed to merely fill in some gaps, but changed nothing substantive about their friendship.

After a while, Nick leaned forward and asked her if she had ever shared her story with anyone else. She looked at him for a long time and said very softly, "No. I thought about it several times during his last few months, but what Tim and I had was not based on where we came from or who we were when we weren't with one another. What we had was something that was out of context from the rest of our lives. I told him about my reunion with my family. I could never bring myself to tell the earlier part of the story. He was respectful enough that he never pressed it."

"Did he tell you his story?"

Maybelle smiled and said, "Yes, he did. I wasn't as respectful as he was. I asked him to tell me his story, and he told me all of it. What is more, he gave me the documents and the photos. If I live long enough, that will be another project. If I can bring myself to do it, I would love to tell Tim's story."

Melissa smiled and said, "I've never known anybody as private and almost secretive about their past as the two of you. I never doubted that either of you had an amazing tale. Will you share your memoir with us?"

"Of course. I'll email you the manuscript. You can help proof it."

"Do you have a publisher?"

"No. For one thing, what I have now is only a preliminary draft. To be honest, I'm not sure I want to publish it commercially. I wrote it for my family. I'm not sure how widely I want to circulate it beyond my kin and my inner circle of friends. I'd be interested in your feedback after you've read it."

Melissa held Maybelle's hand between both hers and asked, "Is Tim's story as interesting as yours?"

Maybelle laughed, "Oh, honey, Tim's story makes mine look like a Sunday supper on the church grounds."

Nick laughed, "Somehow I always felt there was a lot more to him than he let on."

Maybelle shook her head and said, "To use your favorite expression, Melissa, the man was a 'damned-fool eejit' who should never have lived as long as he did by all rights." She paused and cleared her throat, adding, "But, I'm so glad he did."

She stood up and squared her shoulders, "Enough of this sentimental bullshit. We have a weekend to spend with my family, most of whom are tee-totaling Baptists if you can believe such a thing of anybody that'll have anything to do with me. We need to pace ourselves."

Nick stood up, picked her up off the ground, swinging her around in a bear hug, "Since when in the hell have you ever paced yourself, May?"

She kissed his cheek and conked him on the head, telling him to put her down, and replied, "I never have before, but I'm an old woman now and I should learn."

Melissa said, "Here's the way I look at it: we've never got in the habit of moderating our behavior before, why the hell should we start now, when we're old and can use the excuse we've become a bit addle-pated."

Maybelle hugged her and said, "Good point! Maybe I should rethink my resolution to reform."

They went to their separate rooms. Maybelle stretched out on top of the bed, still in her clothes, and cried herself to sleep, alternating between crying for the joy of the opportunity to spend this time together with her family and friends and crying over the loss the people whom she loved who were not there to celebrate with her, starting with her Mama and ending with Tim.

On Saturday, Dwight and his family offered to show Melissa and Nick around Little Rock while Maybelle stayed at the hotel to greet the new arrivals. She sat in the lobby all day, a one woman welcoming committee. The welcoming party ended up in the bar. There was no official gathering on Saturday. That relieved Maybelle of the embarrassment of not inviting her Arkansas family (other than Lucy) to the party, which went on into the wee hours and spilled out of the bar and into various rooms and hallways around the hotel.

At one point Lucy asked the night manager if they had received any complaints from other guests. He said, "Ma'am, there aren't any guests who aren't at the party. I think there were three rooms of people who weren't with your group to begin with. They all crashed your party hours ago. As long as the commotion stays inside the building, nobody will complain."

Lucy had decided to spend the night with Maybelle because she knew Maybelle would be up late and if she didn't show up at the church on time for the christening there'd be hell to pay. Lucy rolled into the room about 3:30 a. m. Maybelle was sitting in a chair, with her computer in her lap, her fingers flying across the keys. Lucy suggested she might want to get some rest. Maybelle sniffed and said, "I can get plentya rest when I get home. I want to savor every minute of this weekend."

Lucy talked her into going to bed anyway.

The next morning they got up to get ready for church. Maybelle was ready first and then she paced the room while Lucy finished dressing. Lucy said, "What's the matter with you? You act like you've never been to church before."

Maybelle looked at her sister and said, "I may have stayed in a lot of convents and monasteries around the world. I may have visited churches as a tourist, but the fact is, I have never been to a Sunday church service in my entire life and I gotta confess to you, I'm not real happy about startin' now!"

Lucy laughed. "May, I would keep that information to myself if I were you!"

Maybelle tried to look sheepish but ended up looking defiant, "I may be a heathen, but I'm not stupid, for Pete's sake! You think I'm gonna admit a thing like that to our family?"

Lucy said, "You'll be fine. Just sit still. Be quiet. And keep a blank look on your face. It will be over sooner than you think."

Maybelle gave her a dubious look, but there was no turning back.

The christening went beautifully. The church was packed with regular members of the First Methodist Church plus both sides of the baby's family. Ray was retired from active preaching, so he and his immediate family attended as well. The Methodist minister had invited Ray to participate in the service, but he declined. He said that showing up for an infant baptism was a huge stretch for him. Participating would be going too far.

Somebody seriously botched the seating arrangements and Maybelle and Ray ended up sitting next to each other in the front pew of the church. Maybelle could tell that Ray was as uncomfortable as she was. She knew he was there only because Charlene had threatened him with bodily harm and/or divorce if he did anything to ruin May's big weekend. Charlene told Maybelle that Ray had indicated that, while he didn't always approve of May, he understood she'd had a different kind of life, and he actually liked the old gal. He promised to cooperate for the weekend, and not make a scene.

The organ started the overture for the processional and May could feel Ray become tense. It was clear he was struggling with his mixed emotions. She leaned over and whispered, "Are you as uncomfortable as I am, Ray?"

He looked at her for a long time and she knew that he intuitively understood that she was as out of her element as he was, only from the opposite direction. Rather than annoying or shocking him, that realization struck him funny. He started to laugh. May pinched him, and hissed, "We got orders from Charlene to behave. I plan to comply, and will thank you to do the same and not to get me into trouble."

They both spent the rest of the service trying to avoid collapsing into a mutual giggle-fit. Charlene kept giving them the evil eye, which they both thought was hilarious. They avoided looking at her, difficult as that was, what with her leaning over in front of them breathing fire.

They watched the christening itself with some fascination. Ray's expression was slightly disapproving but interested. Maybelle was just baffled by the whole thing. At one point she knitted her brow and started to purse up her lips when they started talking about sin and salvation. Lucy pinched her from the other side. That set off another wave of silent laughter.

Maybelle doubted that anyone other than Charlene and Lucy had noticed the hilarity in the front row, but that didn't stop Charlene from raising hell in the car all the way to Ray's church, where the reception was to be held. Ray and Maybelle tried (mostly without success) to appear contrite. Charlene finally yelled herself out. The last few minutes of the ride were quiet, except for Maybelle sniffling in the back seat. She'd laughed so hard she made herself cry. Fortunately, Charlene interpreted it as contrition and took mercy on Maybelle. Fortunately, between the seat belt and Charlene's arthritic neck, she wasn't able to turn around to see that Maybelle was actually laughing.

The reception at Ray's church included both families plus some members of Ray's congregation who were still milling around after their own morning services. The church ladies served a light lunch. Family members passed the baby around like a football. After a while, everybody was supposed to go home to rest before gathering at the hotel for dinner.

Lucy had taken a room at the hotel for the night and checked her mother out of the nursing home. Granny P did not think she would be able to attend the church service and reception plus the dinner. She decided to pass on the morning rituals in order to save her energy for the fun party in the evening. After the reception, Maybelle rode with Lucy to pick up her mother.

Maybelle got in the car and Lucy said, "You know you were so bad this morning Charlene might never speak to you again, and Ray was almost as bad. What got into you?"

"The devil got into me, I reckon. That's my excuse. I don't know what the hell was wrong with Ray."

That made Lucy laugh all the way to the nursing home, where Granny P and Maybelle laughed and cried and hugged. They gave Maybelle a tour of the assisted living facility, which was truly beautiful. Maybelle said she thought she might just move right in.

Lucy laughed and said, "May, you know perfectly well nobody would ever get you to live in a place like this unless you had two broken hips."

Maybelle made a sheepish face and said, "Damned right about that, but it nice to know there is such a place available in the very likely event I fall off a mountain and break somethin' important in which case I'd need to come here."

Granny P said, "I am only ten years older than you, but you have twenty times my energy. How do you do it?"

Maybelle made a face, "Granny, I gotta tell ya. When I'm 85, I'll prob'ly be dead. As for now, I don't act my age because I never acted my age. When I was young I had to act old. Now I'm old, I reckon it's okay to act a fool since I never had the chance to do it before."

They returned to the hotel. When they walked into the lobby, Maybelle said, "God, I need a drink!"

Lucy said, "Don't you dare go into that bar where all your friends are nursing their hangovers. You need to pace yourself, girl."

Maybelle stuck her tongue out at Lucy and said, "I never paced myself before in my life, and I don't intend to start now." She marched into the bar with a defiant gait. Lucy noticed, however, that she ordered coffee.

While Maybelle was distracted, Lucy shanghaied one of her nieces to take Granny P to their room for a nap while Lucy headed for the ballroom where Melissa and Nick, with the help of a few other friends and family, were hanging the photo blow-ups. Lucy had used the _National Geographic_ as the decorative theme. The napkins, table favors and centerpieces featured dozens of Maybelle's photos from around the world. Now, Melissa and Nick had added the perfect touches around the room: huge blow-ups of Maybelle herself and many of her colleagues in exotic and remote places.

Melissa met Lucy at the door, "What do you think?"

"I'm trying not to fall into hysterical sobbing. It's totally perfect!"

"Nick's volunteered to be Maybelle's official tissue bearer for the night."

Nick held up a full box of tissues and a small paper bag to hold the used ones. Lucy laughed out loud, but she was pretty sure that by the time the night was over the box would be empty and the bag full.

Melissa said, "We need your advice. What picture should go at the entrance?"

Three photos lay on the table nearest the door. One was a dramatic black-and-white picture of Maybelle, alone, standing on a rock with her elbow and her camera propped on a low-hanging tree branch, taking a photo of the passing of the wildebeests. Daniel Worthington had taken the photo in the Serengeti. The second was the photo of Maybelle and the gang at the Y2K/Birthday party. The third was the photo of Maybelle and Tim in Berlin in 1989. Lucy burst into tears when she saw the latter. She said, "That's the one!"

Nick said, "We thought so too except that Maybelle and all the rest of us who knew him will take one look at that picture and fall apart."

Lucy said, "Actually, let's put both the one of May in Africa and the one of her and Tim at the door. That is May's life in a nutshell: her passion for her photography and her love for adventure."

"What about her love for Tim?"

Lucy made a strange face. "The way I heard the story, Tim was perhaps her biggest adventure."

They all laughed and moved the pictures around.

Nick asked, "Where should we put that one?"

Lucy looked at it and asked, "Other than Tim isn't almost everybody else in that picture going to be here tonight?"

Melissa and Nick studied it and said, "Yes."

Lucy said, "Then we should put it up by the podium with a picture I had blown up of our whole clan from this morning. By the end of the evening we'll get everybody here to sign the pictures."

Melissa held up her camera and said, "And I'll take a lot of new ones."

Lucy laughed and said, "With all the photographers in this room tonight popping flashbulbs, this place is going to look like the runway at the Academy Awards."

Maybelle thought that she was going to arrive early to greet her guests as they arrived. What she didn't know was that the time of the party had been moved up, so she was actually the last to arrive. She walked in the door at 5:30 expecting to see only Lucy and the staff setting up. Instead, she found the party in full swing.

The room fell silent as the guests realized that Maybelle had arrived. Maybelle blinked a time or two and then looked around the room, puzzled. Gradually, her face reflected the dawning awareness that the party was not what she was expecting. She looked around the room at the huge photos lining the walls and only after scanning the whole room did she notice the photos standing on easels just inside the door. Daniel Worthington was dead but three of his children and several of his grandchildren were in attendance. Maybelle studied his photo for a long time. The rest of the guests maintained a respectful silence. Maybelle looked around, shrugged her shoulders and quipped, "Daniel could take a damned decent photo, for a writer."

Everybody laughed and the party rocked on.

Only then did Maybelle let herself study the other picture. She did not cry. She wanted to see it clearly. She pursed her lips and reached out to touch the image of Tim's face, just briefly. She seemed to notice that Nick was standing close beside her and she asked, "What are you doing?"

"My job."

"And what is that?"

He held up the box of tissues and the bag. "I'm your tissue bearer for the evening."

Maybelle laughed, and said, "Then you'd better stick to me like glue, Bro, because I'm gonna use a lotta those things tonight."

After dinner the guests mingled around the room studying the pictures on the walls and in the centerpieces of the various tables, and taking even more photos of each other. Some were posed group shots. Most were candids.

Maybelle had appointed Melissa to be MC for the evening. She took the microphone and said, "Okay, people, first of all, Maybelle says she wants a copy of every photo taken here tonight. Electronic copies would be preferable, but prints will do if you're not into digital. What the hell she needs with more pictures is beyond me, but that's what she wants and it's her party.

"Speaking of which. This _is_ Maybelle's party. The party for baby Curtis was earlier today, God bless the little bairn. This party is for Maybelle. It isn't her birthday or her retirement or any particular occasion. It is however the first time she has ever been the solo guest of honor at a party..."

Maybelle walked out to the podium, bumped Melissa out of the way with her hip, and said, "I feel a little like Tom Sawyer showing up for my own funeral."

Everybody laughed, a little uncomfortably, because it may have cut a little close to the truth. Maybelle went on, "This is the first time in my life my family and my friends have all been in the same place at the same time. Fact is, y'all have absolutely nothing in common except for me, which prob'ly isn't reason enough for you to tolerate each other, but I do appreciate you bein' willing to do it just this once. It means a lot to me." She puckered up her face to avoid the tears and Nick was by her side with the box of tissues – just in case.

She said, "I have a man-at-arms tonight." She accepted a tissue from him, wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

That broke the tension of the moment, "Anyway, I want to thank y'all for coming. I hope you enjoyed the dinner. And I'm serious about wanting copies of everybody's pictures. The hotel management asked me to request that the party be held to at least a dull roar because the staff is still trying to recover from last night. I'm also told that we'll be safe from the cops provided we keep the party inside the hotel."

She grinned, lifted her thumbs high in the air and and said, "Party on, folks!"

Most of her family used the excuse that they had to go to school or work the next day in order to leave early. Maybelle stood by the door and kissed each of them good-bye. Lucy took Granny P to her room and then came back to the ballroom which, she was surprised to find, was empty except for Maybelle.

Lucy asked, "Where'd everybody go?"

"Well, the way I heard it a bunch of the young'uns was going down the road to a dance club. The photographers and reporters are in the bar, of course. The few sensible folks went to bed because most of them have to travel really far tomorrow."

"What are you doing here? I'd think you'd be in the bar with your friends."

Maybelle laughed, "Actually I am headed for bed. I'm an old lady and I can't take this much excitement any more."

Lucy noticed Maybelle was standing in front of the photo of her and Tim.

Lucy said, "You didn't tell me how gorgeous he was."

"I guess I never thought about how good looking he was physically. I was so blinded by his inner beauty and his talent."

Maybelle walked over to the other photo and said, "Looking at these two photos I understand something about myself that I had never really been able to put into words before."

She pointed at the photo of her and Tim, "He was my greatest love and that photo was taken just before the most exciting experience I ever had in my whole life. My life is richer for having been there and for my time with him."

She walked across the room and brought back a photo of herself kneeling in six inches of water bending over an underwater camera and put it next to the one of her taking the shot of the wildebeests. "These two, however, show you my greatest passion. I'm someone who would kneel in dirty water all day long for weeks on end, taking pictures of snails, or hang out of trees taking pictures of birds or prop up in other awkward positions for hours on end taking photos of whatever passed in front of me. That may be a little nuts, but I never claimed to be anything less than an incurable workaholic.

"Tim sucked as a husband. I know. All three of his wives told me so. But as a partner he was fabulous."

Melissa, who had walked into the room quietly while Maybelle was talking, asked, "When did you meet his wives?"

"They all came to his funeral." She chuckled, "Says a lot about a man when all his ex-wives show up at his funeral, and shed real tears."

"I'd have sucked as wife ... and can you imagine me as a mother? Gawdamighty, that would have been a _disaster_! Any kids I mighta spawned would be such a godawful mess!

"What I have done with my life was to take pictures. I've had a ball. And, despite my age, I'm not through yet."

Melissa, Maybelle and Lucy were standing there looking at the pictures of Maybelle when a small voice behind them said, "Excuse me, Miss Maybelle. I found a picture I think you should see."

They turned to find Tania, holding a picture printed on plain paper from the hotel business center. She was wearing jeans over a nightgown with a half-zipped sweatshirt, and flip-flops. Maybelle wanted to laugh, thinking how apoplectic Felicia would be if she saw that getup.

Tania held the photo out and said, "I think this must have been taken right after that one." She pointed at the photo of Maybelle and Tim. "In fact there's a whole series of these photos posted online. This one is cropped to show just you and that man, but you're both in a bunch of the pictures. It looks as though the photographer was standing in a spot where he could look back at the photographers and reporters who were sitting in that restaurant."

Maybelle held up the picture sort of turned it at an angle, "The photographer was standing by Checkpoint Charley, shooting back towards the restaurant."

Tania said, "It looks as though this picture is taken right after the other one."

Maybelle said, "It looks that way, but I gotta tell you, honey, Tim and I sat there for days and never changed our clothes. It coulda been a few minutes or a coupla days, but the fact is that you're right: those pictures go together."

Tania's picture showed hundreds of photographers pointing their cameras toward the Berlin Wall. Reporters and bystanders alike were pointing toward the top of the Wall. The image was so clear you could see the reflection of people on top of the Wall in some of the really large telephoto lenses. Right in the middle of the picture, Tim is standing, transfixed. Maybelle is half standing, bent over at the waist looking through the eyepiece of a camera on a small tripod sitting the table. Her right hand is on the focus wheel of the lens. Her left hand is in the air like stop sign.

Maybelle laughed, "The caption reads, 'Get the fuck outta my shot, God dammit.' That is exactly what I was saying at that moment."

Maybelle looked at the other picture and back at this one and said, "Tania, I think you're right. It think that picture was taken right before this one. I remember that just before the first wave breeched the top of the Wall, Tim and I looked at each other, grinning, and said something like, 'Here we go!'

"Everybody who looked at that picture tonight saw love in our eyes and they thought it was our love for one another. Yeah, we loved each other, but I gotta tell you what we were really diggin' at that instant was the excitement of what was about to happen next."

Nick walked into the room and said, "The draft beer's all gone and they're working on the whiskey. If anybody wants a drink you'd better hurry."

He glanced at the picture Tania was holding and laughed, "I saw that look on Tim's face twice."

Maybelle asked, "When?"

Nick closed his eyes and smiled, "The first time was when we were in Tibet. Well, we were supposed to be in Tibet, but we were actually in China. Anyway, we came through a high pass and this incredibly gorgeous valley spread out in front of us. We knew that we were subject to arrest or immediate execution if the Chinese border guards caught us. Between the two, I'd have preferred the latter. Tim wanted to go exploring. I wanted to turn back. Fortunately, I won that argument, but not before he stood there looking down into that valley with that look on his face. The man positively lived for dangerous adventures."

Melissa put her arm around him and asked, "When was the other time?"

He paused for a long time and said, "When he asked May to go to Poland with him, and she said yes."

Maybelle hugged and kissed them good-night and said she was going to walk Tania back to her room and then go to bed. She added, "I suggest you two old farts go to bed, too. You have a long flight ahead of you tomorrow."

Nick said, "I can sleep at home. God knows there's nothing else to do around there. I'm going to have fun here while I can."

Just before Tania went into her room, she turned and kissed Maybelle on the cheek, saying, "Thank you so much for inviting us to come to your party. I feel like I have a whole new family. You're like another Grandma."

Maybelle said, "Maybe I can be. Felicia can be the Grandma who bakes cookies and shows up for your school functions. I can be your wild Granny May, who's a bit embarrassing, but basically harmless."

Tania beamed, "Deal!" She started to go into the room she shared with her mother and grandmother, but first she turned and said, "Whaddya say we make one whole page on your website just about this party?"

"Sounds like a plan. Go to bed. We got a plane to catch in the morning."

## Epilogue

The next morning at breakfast, Lucy said, "May, I don't want to go back to Denver. Denver's a town for young, up-and-coming people. I'm retired now and I feel out of place. I don't want to live in Little Rock, either, for a lot of the same reasons you decided not to live here.

"I have been talking to Mom about what I want to do. She's in an assisted living facility. It doesn't matter where a place like that is located. I was wondering if you would mind if I went back to North Carolina with you. Surely there's a nice home nearby for Mom. I could get an apartment somewhere in your town. What do you say?"

Maybelle said, "I say not 'no', but ' _hell no_ '."

"What!?"

"No! You will not put your mother in a home. There's a cute little house across the street from Felicia's home that's for sale. Let's buy it. You and Granny P can live there. We'll get a private duty nurse to take care of her so you are not completely responsible for all of her care."

Felicia said, "Actually, there's a lady in the neighborhood who is a nurse and she's been looking for a job. That house across the street also has a beautiful apartment upstairs, with a kitchen, one large and two smallish bedrooms and a bath and a half."

Carlyn said, "Sounds perfect for a single mom and daughter."

Felicia said, "We could turn the third floor of my house into studio for you, Carlyn. The lighting would be perfect."

Maybelle added, "And you know the views are inspirational." Then she laughed as though at a private joke. The others looked at her demanding that she share it. "We'll be known in town as that crazy bunch of women on Pine Street."

Felicia asked with concern in her voice, "Would you mind very much?"

Maybelle laughed out loud with her head back and joyful tears running down her cheeks. She wiped her face on her sleeve and said, "Oh, Honey, I been called a whole hell of a lot worse! Let's do it!"

The End

**Meredith Morgan** is a pseudonym for an author who grew up in the Midwest and now lives in Florida.

Born at the apex of the Baby Boom wave in the mid 1950's, every time she thinks of some great new, original idea or plan, she knows that next week it will show up on the cover of "Time" Magazine as the "Next Big Thing." She exhibits all the narcissistic Boomer neuroses, plus a few extra just to make things interesting, all of which she pours into her writing.

She enjoys walking the beaches, cooking (in theory if not in actual practice), and collecting odd, unusual and utterly useless bits of knowledge.

Visit her blog at: http://meredith-morgan.blogspot.com/
