Season of the Ghost- Ghosts of Infinite Sweetness

The gentlest ghosts I've ever run into have to be the animal spirits I've dealt with over the years.

The woods behind the house I lived in as a little girl was magical. In the summer it was densely green with moss, fat old leafy trees, may flowers and lush patches of purple violets. I used to go and pick bunches of violets almost every day.

On these little forays, I would often see these tiny little white wisps of something. When they'd zip past me barely touching my skin, I'd think of running up a tree and the roughness of bark; digging in the earth or curling up with a bunch of other tiny warm bodies and going to sleep. Sometimes I'd be a hunter stalking my food and eating it. Those violent images scared me at first, but I did know not everything could live by just eating berries and I came to understand the hunter spirits.

When I was around 7, I felt I was going to be so much braver than last summer start going further into the woods than the area just behind our house. Well, I picked my usual bunch of violets and started back in the direction I thought would take me back home. I was so wrong.

The trees and plants got more tangled and dense and the sun was barely visible through the canopy of trees. I panicked and started to cry. Suddenly I felt a light touch on my arm. I turned and saw one of my little wisps. It was one of my hunter sprits. I followed it over a fallen tree trunk, through a dense area of tall grass and May flowers. The trees started to thin and I could see the sun again. Looking carefully I could see a few wisps floating near an opening that lead to the edge of the wood. I had come out on the opposite side of the woods near my friend Vicky's house. I just had to go up the street in front of her house, cut through the high school's football practice field and I was just a short ways from a road that would take me to my street.

I ran all the way thanking my little wispy friends as I headed home.

The photos are ones MJ took of 2 of my rescue cats. Spats is the black cat and the other is Max Perkins.

The Skipsy Doodle of Death

My brother David got a red skipsy doodle for Christmas one year.

It was used inside as a teeter totter and a stand-y thing until the snow melted. For about a week it was an outdoor teeter totter. But David who could tear apart a Tonka Toy Jeep with his bare hands, had other plans.

We lived in one of those 60's neighborhoods on a culdesac (I like that word). As the street moved away from our house it sloped down into a pretty decent hill. David and his friends rode various bikes, wagons, big wheels and scooter-type things down this hill a literally breakneck speeds.

I knew something was up one sunny afternoon when David came in in wearing a football helmet, an old bath towel superman cape and wanted to borrow my long pink jump rope. I went out front and there was David tying one end of the rope to the back of Bobby Trauger's purple Spyder bike . He then secured the other end to the handle of "old red".

He threw himself on "old red" face down, grabbed the handhold on and yelled let 'er go! Bobby peeled out of our driveway and "old red" popped over the curb about a foot in the air, smacked the street and scraped away with David holding on for dear life. You could hear the scraping sound all the way down the street and David yelling "Go Go Go!" Amazingly, Dave and his friends never got hurt on the "old red" street runs until they started using him on their bike rides through the woods behind our houses. I think it was Jeff who got catapulted into a tree and got scratched up. But, his real problems started because he landed landed in a poison ivy bush .

Poor "old red" went to the great teeter totter playground in the sky when I was going off to college one year. My Dad was cleaning out the basement and put a bunch of stuff out by the trash cans. Scraped and battered "Old Red" was leaning upright against one of the cans. I was upstairs packing and looked out my bedroom window when I heard an old heap pull into our drive way. David and a few of his friends piled out. They all stood looking at "old red" who was scraped, scarred and still had a length of pink rope tied to one of his handholds. For a few minutes, they each took turns laying on "old red" and dragging each other around in street in front of our house. Eventually , they stopped and were laughing and telling stories looking at "old red" who was resting at their feet.

Dave propped "old red" back up against the can and they all started to walk back up the drive to our house. Everyone of them looked back at least once at that battered old piece of red plastic.