The Lesson of Bod Mechell (Michael's House)

When I pray, I address a person. Do you do that? I have to believe there is a being somewhere out there that is listening intently, guiding me, protecting me, seeing down the road a ways, ready to warn me when things are about to get rough. I guess that is one way to describe god. When I was little, family members tried to teach me - from their Christian points of view - what god was all about. The thing I disliked the most about that view of god was how pre-packaged and processed it seemed. This is what Jesus looked like. This is what heaven looks like. This is what happens when you go up there and get to meet up with dead relatives and your childhood puppy and you never have to worry about getting fat in heaven. No one is crying, no one is sad. No one is suffering, no one does anything bad. My six year old questions were about baths and food and bedtime and parents not living together. My perspective was from the point of view of a curious kid who really couldn't figure out the reason things happened like they did, and no one talked about those things, so I either had to keep pestering people with questions (that never got answered) or I made up stuff myself to answer those questions.

I really wanted something profound to happen to me that would explain it all and answer all the questions and give me a bit of peace of mind. That never happened, but I have had profound experiences in my life, and I have stumbled across some answers here & there, and I do once in a while, have peace in my mind.

There was one moment when all those things came together in one moment.  I recall it well, that moment. I was looking out a window at a sunset. I was sitting in a window seat in a 18th Century cottage. I was Home, and that's when it happened. I was living in North Wales when that happened. I was married, I had just found out that day that I was gonna be a mommy.  I was waiting for my husband to come home from work. I had his favorite supper ready for him. Our little stone cottage was warm and tidy, there was a lovely wood fire burning in the parlor hearth. There were fragrant wild flowers in a vase on the dining room table that I had gathered on my walk that afternoon. The table was set with fish eating utensils (It was Friday and for some reason we always ate fish on Fridays...). We had a cat named Puddles and she was happily snoozing on a green velvet cushion near the fire. It was November, 1987 and it was cold cold cold outside. My husband walked in and the warmth and smells and atmosphere of our lives hit him right in the face and he breathed it in like he'd just come up for air out of the depths of the ocean. He smiled at me and winked. I smiled back and pointed at the supper on the table. He was shucking off his mud caked boots and saying, "Kippers for tea!!" He loved kippers for supper on a cold & windy night. No idea why. It meant something to him, I suppose, like something really tasty from childhood, ya know? He liked them for Sunday breakfast, too. Although he never got up before noon on Sundays. That was the only day of the week he didn't have to work and he stayed in bed as long a humanly possible.

Our cottage had a name, like most older habitations do, in Britain. It was known as "Michael's House" or Bod Mechell in Welsh.  It had four rooms, two up and two down. It took me all of an hour to clean it each Monday, windows and everything. It had stone flagged floors downstairs that I would mop and they would be dry in moments if the fire was lit. It had short pile outdoor carpet upstairs that I would vacuum in ten minutes flat. It had lovely warm velvet curtains on all 8 windows of the house. The kitchen had whitewashed walls and funny looking vintage linoleum on the floor with a faded art deco pattern in muted colors. In the sitting room was the small drop leaf table with two chairs, a small sofa & easy chair, a Welsh dresser displaying my small but growing collection of Welsh Lustre Ware pitchers, and there was a small pianola which my husband found in an abandoned house on the farm he often visited when he was out walking, trying to find missing sheep for his employer. He brought the pianola home in the front scoop of the blue Ford tractor he drove every day at work, and hearing it playing itself as it bumped and thumped down the road towards the cottage is still one of the most amusing sounds I have ever heard. I poked my head out the kitchen window when I heard it and beheld an amazing sight: a lovely nearly antique piece of furniture tied down with orange bungee cords and used pink bailing twine, in that tractors front scoop which had everything in it from cow manure to a hundred weight of fodder beets to spoiled hay to a dead sheep, at one time or another. Plonk, plang, ching, kring, said the pianolo. My husband had two passengers with him in the cab of the tractor, the lads he worked with on the farm, and they were all laughing hysterically at the sound. A number of cars were behind them, and their passengers were also laughing. It was quite a sight.

It took me a couple of weeks to clean and tune that pianolo, but when it was ready, we had one of our weekend parties, which began Friday at sundown and ended at 8 am Monday morning. I played that silly instrument for the people who came to the party, and they seemed to love it. That was another amazing moment that will always be with me. People brought food and drink and sleeping bags, because they knew what our parties would be like. If it rained, we would set up tents but everyone ended up in the sitting room. If it was fair, we would sleep in the garden under the stars, with the bonfire going all night, occasionally spitting sparks into the night sky full of stars. Our front garden had a marvelous fire pit with split logs to sit upon, an outdoor privy nearby that sported TWO holes, so that no one need to be inconvenienced to wait for someone already using the outhouse. We were considered quite wealthy because we had a two-holed privy.

There was a rumor that I was one day gonna show everyone how to do a proper American-style barbecue, and that weekend, when the pianolo came to live with us, I made them a real genuine authentic American hamburgers and hot dogs feast. They loved it. Gwylim, my husbands best friend, ate six of each and we gave him a prize of one entire two litre bottle of lovely brown home brewed beer. He consumed that beer much too quickly after the burgers & dogs then stood up, said his own name twice, then upchucked the entire contents of his digestive tract in a lovely rooster tail formation, onto the base of my greengage plum tree, which never again gave me any fruit ever, and so forever after was named the Gwil-Gwil Up & Out Tree. The Welsh love nicknames.

My nickname was Mama Tess. Someone once asked me if I liked my birth name, which I don't, and what name I would choose for myself, which I would choose to be Tess. At that moment I was bottle feeding a lamb in my lap, so they called me Mama Tess. I liked that very much.

Those were some wonderful days. That summer of '86 was filled to the brim with good times. I sometimes get into a frame of mind when I can see the golden sheen of the sunsets of that summer. That color calms me. Those memories make me feel so good, to recall them. Such good times, those were.

When I think of those times, it brings peace to my soul. When things now get terribly tangled and difficult and unpleasant and horrible, which they so often do, and I think I'm not able to bear another minute of it, I think upon that summer in that riverside cottage. I think about that garden I planted, my chickens in the hedgerows, my walks to the beach, finding those snow whites that cold crisp January day under an elderberry tree in the back garden, under a light dusting of new snow. I can see now why paper whites are considered such a marvelously good luck thing to see. It means winter is finally letting go of the World. It's a little bit of a plant that has lovely white stars for flowers and a little bit of clean bright green in the leaves and your eyes are so grateful to see that color you can't help but cry from the happiness of having that gift from Nature. 

That kind of happiness makes a person want to pray.

I still pray to the one at the other side of forever. I ask for explanations sometimes, but eventually, I figure it out for myself. I don't much like it, to have to work so hard figuring it out for meself, but this time of my life seems to be a time of trying to figure out why things are the way they are. I am so angry about a number of things that didn't work out, why some people had to go away forever, why dreams you thought would never end, ended.

Mostly I am able to keep my temper, but sometimes..... well, sometimes it boils up and I feel a rage that I don't even have a name for.

That's when I call out to The One At The Other Side Of Forever and demand to know why things are the way they are. I get no reply, but in the silence after the question, I know I'll work it out for myself.